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).

@Hoorayforsunshine

OK, I agree with you. For some, there is a whole world of difficulty to get through before you can even sit down and think about doing homework, for example.

I visited a family of four in London who lived in one room above a flat. The hottest day of the year and the windows had to be kept shut as the fumes from traffic were so bad.

Lots more could be said about that situation.

If I understand it right you can still bring 18 litres of non sparkling wine so that's still cases allowed. Or 9 litres of sparkling and strong one?

it is depressing that we’ve saddled ourselves with restrictions that we don’t need to have

We also don't need to have the restrictions that used to be imposed on us by the EU

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.

Then get out and vote for someone who will represent what you want. Elections coming up in many places on 6th May.

As a Brit in Europe who used to buy a shed load of stuff from back home in the UK, I know that I have changed my buying habits recently having received a whacking extra payment on clothes I bought from the UK that were worth about £200 and my postman said I had to pay about £130 extra customs payment on them or refuse them and send them back.

I know that British friends abroad who used to buy many things from the UK, from Christmas food to building materials have had similar experiences and are now avoid ordering stuff from the UK.

As there are, approximately 800,000 or so Brits in Europe ATM (or there were pre-Brexit anyway and those were the officially registered ones) I imagine my individual experience has been duplicated quite a few times, and I imagine British companies have sustained quite a few losses because of this.

In terms of wider post-Brexit trade, EU and UK origin goods are not subject to customs duties , but you do have to prove the origin and you do have to complete the documentation, which obviously adds time and therefore expense to each transaction. A lot of smaller businesses are unable to deal with the complexities of the customs process and in addition so many products sold by UK companies are not made in the UK or in the EU, but in a third country (eg an Asian country) which means that customs duties must be paid on goods from the UK in to the EU. Hence we get back to my original parcel full of clothes that I thought were UK origin but had obviously been made in Asia or elsewhere and therefore required a whacking supplementary payment on my part.

In other words, all of this is just a massive barrier to UK trade, bureaucratic and expensive, and as a result UK companies will lose sales thus substantially reducing UK tax revenue which goes to NHS and other vital services.

YANBU OP - it is depressing.

One of the things that I'm most angry about is the opportunities we have taken away from our poorest most disadvantaged young people. These people were never going to get a exchange to a university overseas or science job in Europe, these things will be much harder now but will still exist for richer kids. The life enhancing experiences of working a few summer seasons in minimum wage jobs on the Costas or wherever, things poor kids with few qualifications did, those chances are gone, we've voted to take them away and given them nothing in return.

“ tangerinelollipop

it is depressing that we’ve saddled ourselves with restrictions that we don’t need to have

We also don't need to have the restrictions that used to be imposed on us by the EU”

@tangerinelollipop if we want to sell things (goods and services) into Europe etc then we need to comply with the rules imposed by them.

Previously we were a big and important county in Europe deciding those rules. Now we have no say because we are not on the board anymore.

We also don't need to have the restrictions that used to be imposed on us by the EU

That our representatives either chose to vote for or couldn't be bothered to vote for. The shell fish business for example - EU law supported by Britain back in 2011 because quite rightly we didn't want stuff coming in from polluted waters of 3rd countries which had much lower standards. Now we have chosen to make ourselves a 3rd country and have been hoist by our own petard.

I take it back, we've given them a blue passport in exchange for removing their rights to live in 31 countries. Our young people will be one of the very few in Europe without these rights.

@FJON

It's the political equivalent of negging

Absolutely spot on. And since when did we employ such shabby tactics?

@Persiantrio

You’ve spectacularly managed to misinterpret my post and are exactly the problem many of us are trying to illustrate.

Sorry @Persiantriothat was meant for @Peregrina

@FOJN

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.

The equation of 'having a degree' and 'being intelligent' was pretty insulting. I have a masters and professional quals, but that doesn't make me cleverer than someone who chose a different career path.

I know stunningly intelligent (and successful) people with no degree, and some very thick people who do have a degree. There might be some correlation between intelligence and level of education, but not to the degree that some people seem to believe.

Eurostar maybe a thing of the past if it doesn't get funding soon.

I had my diamond earrings made in Antwerp....

Having lived in Europe for 13 years, there isn't really that much I would go back to buy except for jars of cherries in genever and chocolate.

@Hoorayforsunshine

"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"

Oh £150 is quite a bit different. I guess a standard sunshine holiday we dont buy much. But I guess on Disney trips we have spent more than that (bought home decor etc)

Haven't ever gone over the USA limit but I hadn't realised it was as low as you say for EU now.

I think it will hurt small online businesses. I haven't bought anything from ebay/amazon.co.uk since January.
I regularly done shopping online.
I know DP's job have changed suppliers to a company in Holland too.
On the brighter side the UK has the vaccine schedule sorted.

Not sure which post of mine you think has been misinterpreted, but if it was about council's wasting money - you get the councillors you deserve. It is possible to get organised and get some of the time servers booted out.

I actually think a lot of European countries will allow young people in doing those casual summer jobs. It’s the middle sector I think where opportunities will disappear as they are the official paperwork world. There was a programme in Europe that was meant to follow on from Erasmus where young grads could work in elite sectors (publishing, media, design, etc) in Spain, etc. The idea was that they could then return to the UK with experience and language skills enabling them to compete as they had international experience in their CV.

Where I do think w/c have really lost out in are the schemes that are finally falling into place in the poorest communities who have lost everything else and were finally getting something in place - community cinema for example. These things were just starting to take off and whatever goes in there now will take some time to work at.

Although - is that per person?

As I guess across our family we won't spend £150 each. But I'm sure there are lots of people who happily spend that easily on a shopping trip.

I know not everyone is into supermarket fashion like me.

Thankfully even my day trips to Calais I limit myself to €100! It's more to scratch my "I love foreign supermarkets" itch. But I guess I'm the rarity.

@Kendodd exactly.

I was watching a home in the sun type programme with a woman who didn’t have a degree. She had gone out to Spain or somewhere and started a business with not very much and then settled with a local and was happy. That’s just one person but she now couldn’t do that.

Not so many jobs based on water sports in the sun here, and you can’t just go off and have a punt at something for a few months.

OP - The only reason there's no outrage is because for millions of people popping over to Paris is just something they wouldn't consider. I know I wouldn't. We are only outraged if things affect us directly.

I don’t think you quite understand how the other half lived pre Brexit

I have people I speak to in various areas and I think the pro Europe campaign was definitely angled to the middle classes and completely overlooked those that were at the poorer end of the scale.
Project Fear telling people that if they voted Brexit that property prices would decrease when a lot of people couldn’t afford to buy sounded like a good thing

Or that holidays abroad would cost more when you can’t afford to go anyway isn’t going to improve your life.
When deprived areas see factories built but the jobs are advertised in a foreign language
and Freedom of movement meant nothing to someone who wasn’t going to go anyway.

Dd and ds saw last year what it was like to be in the EU. They applied to do fruit picking at a local farm. They heard nothing till the farmer said he had to get a load of migrants in because no British person wanted to do the work.

The people I know who voted Brexit are quite happy with their decision because for them their lives have improved.

I voted Remain because I wanted myself and dc the freedom to be able to go and live in Europe without the hassle of going through the visa process. I am looking at the US now as I think getting a visa there is going to be easier than somewhere like Spain or France.

“@Persiantrio

You’ve spectacularly managed to misinterpret my post”

What post? Sorry there’s 400+ posts on here.

@StupidNerves I don’t know if it is per person or family travelling.

I do know from my Morocco experience that it’s just something you need to think about and factor in, whereas in the EU you didn’t before. It’s just an additional barrier that is high enough to not trouble some people, not enough money that rich people care much, and people in the middle will need to be mindful of it. Adding trade and customs barriers is a step back.

The thing is that most people are middle class.

People do care about property prices otherwise the newspapers wouldn’t bang on about it and there wouldn’t be a million tv shows about property.

I agree that it wasn’t the right thing to focus on those things when selling Remain - but it’s not inherently wrong to talk about ‘middle class’ issues like property.

I find it intensely dull when people talk about property. But it is a very English middle class thing and there are millions of those people - just as valid as the working class people