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).

@GenderApostate19 by local supplier - I mean someone in the UK if you had purchased those items in the UK.

Oh dear

P

I am interested in the effect this will have on the European economies - will they see a lowering of GDP?

I don't see why they would.

“@DoubleTweenQueen

I don't see why we should all just accept it and turn away from the evidence of the emerging ramifications, personal or national. It's important to guage effects and hold to account those in power and influence that have brought us to this point.”

I agree.

It’s also only been 3 months, and in the context of a global pandemic. For all those who say it’s happened, it’s been fine get over it, it’s just too soon for any of that.

Whenever I've come back from the USA/Asia etc I've not had to stop and declare anything.

Won't be any different?

@Hoorayforsunshine

The amount of students and graduates with drink/drug problems indicates to me that many struggle with moving away and don’t come from the idolised background you depict.

I think the real key is the portability of a recognised qualification. This enables grads to move away to other countries knowing that there experience will be recognised and that each step is a forward move that they can build on. I think without that a lot of people enter local employment at 16, build up their skills in line with that organisations practices and then have a fear of leaving as their skills might not be recognised elsewhere. There was also a proud legacy of working continuously in one place. So, graduates have portability and crucially, the infrastructure they enter into accommodates them(companies sort out visas, accommodation, etc). My brother works internationally and everything was done for me when he made the move - he got an entire package that meant it was straightforward for him to move.

So someone isn't allowed to buy Murano glass as a special present, because that's not an option for ordinary people. Yet there are quite a few on here boasting about their long haul holidays. Why is that different?

Why aren't they content with Blackpool?

Their!!!!! Not there

And him not me!

hold to account those in power and influence that have brought us to this point

It's a majority vote through a democratic process that 'brought us to this point'

Why hasn't this thread (and the Murano and Russian art ones) been moved to the Brexit boards yet?

Whenever I've come back from the USA/Asia etc I've not had to stop and declare anything

You were supposed to, if you had anything to declare.

It's a majority vote through a democratic process that 'brought us to this point'

And if you believe that you must be a Brexiteer. No-ones that thick are they?

@Smurfsarethefuture

I understand what you are saying but I’m not offering an idealised view of university- I’m saying that getting to university, even before you have a portable qualification, suggests that you overcame the hurdles that many others didn’t. E.g family abuse problems that mean that you can’t finish school with the qualifications to get to uni. Local infrastructure that allows you to travel to college or uni. Access to buses, trains, cars.

Agree that having a portable degree makes a difference once you qualify.

Lots of people go to university (I read 50% recently but not sure if that just refers to tertiary education) so this is not about being elitist.

Some of the double-think on this thread is hilarious!

"How dare you wealthy Londoners pay £59 for a return to Paris. Us poor Northerners have been shopping in New York for years"...

@StupidNerves you’re right, it won’t be different except that the threshold is lower - I think. I think it’s more like £300+ from the US, and £130-150 from the EU? I don’t know the precise figures.

Otherwise, yes it will be the same and if you buy goods above that amount you need to declare and pay the tax. If you don’t, you are committing an offence.

Pre pandemic I went on holiday to Morocco and bought a rug. It was below the threshold for customs tax but I found it quite stressful because I had to make sure I held onto the piece of paper showing how much I paid and took a picture of it and saved a copy on my phone. And then the rest of the 10 day holiday I had to add up to make sure I didn’t go over the threshold (can’t remember but it was about £390? £340?) in total for my purchases, or that I factored in the extra tax if I bought something.

None of which was a big deal, or life and death. But it was something that I just didn’t need to think about if I had been on holiday in Spain before (not that I ever bought much on holiday!). It was frictionless and now there is a point of friction which didn’t exist before.

You can argue about whether that’s important, or whether people shouldn’t care about it. That’s fine.

But you can’t deny that it exists (and that it was missold as part of the referendum).

@Rukaya what effects are going to catch up to me? The price of my weekly food shop is the same, the price of my toiletries, clothes etc are the same. My rent hasn’t sky rocketed, my bills haven’t sky rocketed, my children aren’t in danger. As far as I’m concerned, that’s all that matters. I was initially scared of food and medicine shortages, I don’t see any of those. I was scared of rapid inflation but that’s not come around and I was scared of a decline in the way we live, but lockdown is the only thing having contributed to be being shut in ky home for the last year.

What you fail to realise is that Brexit isn’t affecting poorer people like me. I’ve never had the finances to travel or spend money lavishly, I’ve budgeted since I was 16 years old and never spent money on frivolities if they’re unneeded or unaffordable. Brexit affects those that are more comfortable, and it’s a shame for you really, you’ve had to give up some luxuries but that’s life. I wasn’t the one that voted for this shit show so I’m not going to spend my time worrying it’ll catch up to me.

@MayYouLiveInInterestingTimes

And that clash of expectation vs reality was played out in crucial spaces on some of those most vulnerable imv at a time when we expanded the public sector. That’s what I find hardest of all. I could feel the weight of it (as someone who had worked on several systems). I was also able to see just how some services were being directed based on no discernible underlying principle. A free for all in some places. That is why locals in poor housing get so angry at a local council funding an abstract piece of art in their dilapidated town centre yet the message that comes back is that locals are barbarians, philistines, to. It is a deliberate offsetting of tensions in delicate situations and I cannot understand why that is allowed into public spaces when we then have to sort out problems. It is short sighted thinking to say the least.

I agree it is a result of capitalism/US culture vs established, embedded social democracies (how is it fair that UK students paid tuition fees yet competed for the same jobs as non paying European students). I was pre fees so it didn’t affect me but I think it is unfair. It was defined as a way to equalise historic imbalances between UK and European countries but it meant that communities that weee already secure and strong could integrate better than communities that weren’t who then got pulled further back down. People could sense this and it is at odds with the messages that the working classes had previously been given. I don’t blame them for believing what they needed to believe at the time because so much of the financial offsetting was happening elsewhere - so grants were available to w/c students, etc and a lot came through fee free. I just think it was very badly managed with so little transparency and accountability to wider debate. Who does that really benefit?

@HannibalHayes - I know! Apparently you can’t want to buy diamonds in Amsterdam or clothes in Paris, or have an au pair from Europe, or cases of wine.

But you can travel long haul all the time and bring in 4K of goods from the USA.

Baffling.

I don’t care what people buy. I care about the people who will suffer who have none of these choices and the choices that we have all lost.

I don’t feel that an £8bn limit on the stock exchange being lifted (or the other ‘benefits’) is worth it in exchange for that.

Smurfsarethefuture and Fighting TheFoo - I totally agree

So much racism and paternalism on the remain side that everyone ignores.

I'll never forget about Richard Bacon complaining about finding a cleaner if Brexiteers won. It was demeaning, patronizing and, frankly, racist.

Yes! And Miljea's post upthread is a good example of this. Unbelievably patronising.

I am a left of centre, remainer, labour voting professional (with working class roots) and even I find myself bristling at the assumptions being made about how uneducated, uncultured, racist and thick Brexit voters are. (The statement that the average Brexit voter would never aspire to more than 2 weeks on the med each year..... really?!)

People who have no contact with WC communities lazily dismiss what are actually valid concerns, and then act surprised that those WC communities don't share their priorities.

I'm trying not the buy " stuff" do this will help me.

@CatsHairEverywhere2

It’s been 3 months since Brexit took effect. Stockpiling by suppliers and covid has smoothed over some of the immediate impacts.

I am surprised if your food shop hasn’t gone up in the last 5 years though given the impact on sterling. And I would be very surprised if your food shop doesn’t go up because the supermarket bosses are saying that prices and choice will be impacted.

So this will help me.
As in the OP's point about spoiling shopping trips to the EU. Not that I ever did that come to think of it!

There were newspaper headlines about people who’ve been to University more likely to vote Remain

It turned out to be true but I was surprised at the lack of scrutiny then and indeed now. Younger people were more likely to vote remain, a higher proportion of young people now go to university so it follows that remain voters were more likely to have a degree. It was used as a stick to beat leave voters with, the assumption being that not having a degree means you're too thick to understand the arguments in the debate. If that is true then surely the result of the 1975 referendum is null and void because most voters then would not have had a degree. Of course this is ridiculous but it doesn't stop some people asserting that leave voters are thick. It's the political equivalent of negging and it's clearly not effective.

Agree OP. Just looking at some summer jobs for next year for DS. I follow an animal sanctuary in Spain on social media and they want students for 3 - 6 months stints. Would have been a great opportunity for ds and he coukd have learnt Spanish and had fun. But guess what? It's part of Erasmus and only open to EU students. Fucking Brexit!

Blimey. The only reason I started this thread is because I was trying to remember the last trip I took with the kids and it was Paris last summer. And I remembered that we did buy something (I’m not even going to say what because people get ridiculous and it’s irrelevant) and I was thinking, we probably would hesitate to do that now, even if we could go this year, because of the customs charges.

So no, it’s not the worst thing going on in the world, but it is depressing that we’ve saddled ourselves with restrictions that we don’t need to have. There used to be no difference to buying something from Paris or Manchester. Now there is. To me this feels more clautrophibluc somehow.

The only reason there isn’t outrage about this kind of thing right now is because nobody has been able to go in their Euro breaks / holidays yet. But just wait until they do...