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).

@Peregrina

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.

No, you have completely misunderstood my post. I do vote , always have and take it very seriously. I am trying to point out that in fractured communities, different needs and wants are played off against an often very socially disadvantaged populace. You may have seen the recent documentary on housing in Croydon that showed a woman with two children living in a council flat covered in mould. It was shocking to see but not shocking to anyone who has to rent, sadly. It is down to different budgets and resources that in the long term are meant to sort themselves out but to people living in such precarious circumstances it must be hard to rationalise it this way. Deliberately setting communities against one another like this meant that the left behind had little recourse to show their feelings and that I think played a large part in Brexit.

A nuanced point that, perhaps in your haste to try and make legitimate points seem a matter of personal failure, was clearly lost on you.

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

For some yes - the Rees-Moggs of the world, who moved some of his business to Ireland. For some of the wealthy who no longer have to worry about EU tax legislation coming in which might have prevented them hiding their wealth in tax havens. For criminals who can't now be extradited. I can't yet see what it's done for the average person.

The fruit and veg picking stuff is a bit of a red herring, because much of this work until about 1990 was done by roving gangs of e.g. travellers - who I don't suppose were exactly the flavour of the month in all communities. Or pre-war East Enders used to go hop-picking in the season.

@Persiantrio

And yes, I am really sad at what we’ve lost. I’m sad at the loss of Erasmus. I’m sad my kids won’t be able to work in the EU during school / uni holidays. I’m sad that it feels more of a hassle now, going somewhere like Paris, where before it was no different than going to Manchester or somewhere. I’m sad about the 300 people my DH has had to let go of as a direct result of Brexit - not to mention the offices in the EU that have closed / been scaled down.

And before anyone comes in on their high horse with “We’re in a pandemic so F off” - yes I am fully aware of that and you have no idea how I have been affected by the pandemic, But this thread is not about the pandemic.

I can’t see one positive of Brexit that makes the additional inconveniences worthwhile. Not one. Still nobody can tell me.

I agree with you totally Persiantrio.

@Persiantrio

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...

....and this...

@HannibalHayes

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"...

Indeed!

Also like the logic that duties are no biggie because you can simply ignore them. Yes, if you’re dishonest and happy to run the risk of the consequences of being caught. Completely agree with @Hoorayforsunshine on this point.

@Mamamia456

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.

How depressing. I am outraged on behalf of everyone affected by Brexits stupidity. All the SMEs. The fishermen. The tourists. Everyone.

@Hoorayforsunshine

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

Pre-Covid, the median household income in the UK was £29,900. Most people might view themselves as middle class (I don't know tbh), but if 50% of households have less than £30k coming in, there are a lot of struggling families out there, and a lot of low-waged people.

Many/most older homeowners wouldn't mind seeing property prices fall because they want their children and grandchildren to be able to buy. They paid off their mortgages years ago, so a drop in prices wouldn't affect them but would help the younger generations in their family.

The remain campaign saying that Brexit would cause property prices to fall, and that this was A Bad Thing, totally missed the mood of a large proportion of the country, homeowners and non-homeowners alike.

The obsession with property in this country doesn't stem from us all wanting prices to go up - it's a symptom of the fact that owning a home is so unattainable for so many people.

@StupidNerves

I mentioned the £130/150 number as someone in the thread mentioned it. I haven’t travelled from Europe since 31 Jan this year so I don’t know what the limits are.

I just know that it’s complicated, it may be different for each country but I’m not sure.

From the US you can bring back £390 (?) in your suitcase but if you order something worth over about £36 you have to pay customs, or is it VAT and customs?

I avoid online shopping from the US for that reason (also returns not really possible) and presents to/ from friends in the US is difficult.

It used to be easy to send and receive presents from people in Europe.

A friend who runs an online business had an Italian customer email to cancel his 15 euro order because he was told that the customs fees to receive it were going to be more than that again. My friend used to do 40% of his business to Europe and it’s been killed. So he has to get rid of his employee because his business is suffering.

So I don’t know the specific amounts, but my point isn’t really whether it’s £36 or £56 from the USA for a parcel, or even £130 or £390 in person from the EU. These are barriers to business and a lot of small and medium companies in the UK will be suffering and their employees suffering as a result.

smurfsarethefuture - no, I don't think I missed your point and I suspect we are in agreement. Many of the problems of Local Government are due to them being hamstrung by lack of cash, which has come down from Central Government.

I recall that Tory MP's voted against legislation which would require landlords to make properties fit for human habitation. I wasn't sure of the details so I looked it up and that is essentially correct.
fullfact.org/economy/did-mps-vote-against-homes-having-be-made-fit-live-in/

What was driving the vote against? It appears to be a desire not to spend money. Let's not bother with details about ensuring that fellow humans have decent conditions to live in.

Think also of the free school meals votes - again the Tories voted against this. With a lot of crocodile tears for the poor. But quite happily supported the Eat out to help out scheme. Sunak's children, Rees-Mogg's children, Cameron's children and little Wilfred Johnson aren't likely to see their parents depend on food banks.

@ReceptacleForTheRespectable

When I say that most people are middle class, I mean that if you look at the definitions of what middle class is - the ABC etc categories, then we have moved from very clear cut distinctions between WC/MC/UC to most people being in the middle and the boundaries between them being more seamless.

That’s by the by.

I agree that lower property prices would be better. It is irrational for people to want high property prices because it is your biggest liability in life. But we have an economy in which increasing property prices is sort of baked in as a need.

And the impact of really reduced property prices would be negative equity for many which I think would be a disaster for all - wouldn’t it lead to problems for those privately renting as well as owner occupiers?

I think that property prices is a bit of a red herring in the context of Brexit.

We can agree that remain didn’t do a good enough job. Hopefully we can also agree that it is inherently harder to argue for the status quo when that makes it seem like you are happy about various things. The only way to go therefore was to say that things will be worse.

The leave campaigns were massively disingenuous too, and anything that was actually true (loss of access to markets for products like shellfish) was treated as project fear.

So it was tricky, but made trickier by the fact that public discourse at the moment cannot handle anything remotely tricky and the right wing ownership of much of the newspapers does us all a disservice (why do we think they are attacking the middle of the road BBC?).

@AnnaFiveTowns

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!

Of course, but posts like yours generally elicit a ‘Europe was never for the likes of us’ response. Ignoring the fact that - as previous posters have said - Europe was often the best chance of experiencing the wider world if you don’t have covetable skills or cash to tide you over. Guess who’ll still be able to retire to Italy, to take one example? Pensioners with an annual income of EUR 30,000+. No work permitted, of course.

Talking of Erasmus, when I did my year abroad those students who were from less well off backgrounds always studied in Europe - because they could work instead of or as well as studying. The better off could go to further flung places where visa restrictions made that impossible if they fancied.

A race to the bottom.

Class divides in this country are poisonous, and brexit has done, and will do, nothing to solve this problem.

@Peregrina on people who have done well out of Brexit.

Just my anecdata so I’m not saying it is representative - I live in the midlands/ south and have a professional job:

• the only people I know who voted brexit were people who were uneducated and a bit racist, or very educated and very rich and had previously lived in low tax / no tax places, and a couple of very leftie people who wanted Brexit to change something about workers rights, which Innever really understood.

Since the vote, the lefties have accepted they were wrong, the low paid and a bit racist have said ‘get over it, move on’ and don’t care.

The very rich who either voted for it or didn’t but don’t care are fine because wealth is insulating and the ones whose pay/ assets are linked to the dollar are happy because they got a windfall.

But that’s against a background of most people I know voting remain or not admitting to voting leave. I fully accept that isn’t representative.

My point is just that the rich Will be fine, and will always be fine. And by rich, I mean millionaires here - I am in the top 1-5% of earners and I feel very affected by it negatively.

We can agree that remain didn’t do a good enough job
I believe Dominic Cummings said remain lost because it overestimated the intelligence of the British public and talked about the SM and CU when voters didn't have a clue what these things were.
Aaron Banks said remain lost because they focused on facts and they didn't need facts because they had feelings. Oh and that leave won because they lied or in his words "took people by the hand and led them down the garden path".
Their own side think Leave voters are thick.

Hoorayforsunshine

Well if there were so many middle class home owning people then why did Brexit happen. I knew the moment Cameron announced the referendum that we would be leaving.

Peregrina the ones I know who voted leave are quite happy because a lot of the EU migrants left and went to a different country and they were then able to get a job.

[quote Hoorayforsunshine]@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.[/quote]
Ironically the policy of 50% going to university was brought in by Labour to avoid mass unemployment when the Eastern Europeans came to take all the jobs.

I don’t know anyone who took notice of the leave campaign. They had already made up their minds as soon as the referendum was announced

Perhaps customs duties on imported shopping wasn’t the best opening example, but broadly I’m with you OP. I do think we’ve been so distracted with Covid that when we open up there will be any number of ‘Oh shit’ moments, from minor niggles to major inconveniences, as it slowly dawns on people that Brexit wasn’t the brightest idea.

I think a lot of it will only hit people when we’re allowed to travel again - not weekend mini breaks, which we’re out of many people’s reach anyway, but the annual summer holiday to mainland Europe becoming more stressful and less convenient in many small ways. Other, less tangible, things though will be like the proverbial boiling frog - the increasing insularity, reduced opportunities for our DC to study and work abroad, export issues etc will fly under the radar for many.

And it won’t just affect the moneyed middle classes - I for one benefited massively from my Erasmus year precisely because I wasn’t from a cosmopolitan, well travelled background. It broadened my horizons and boosted my confidence massively. I’m sad my own DD will be much more restricted and won’t be able to discover Europe in the same immersive, hassle-free way.

People will say that all of these are relatively minor issues and inconveniences, but the thing is Brexit was sold as a positive thing, being all buccaneering trade and idyllic sunlit uplands. And I’ve yet to see any such positivity materialise.

I don’t know anyone who took notice of the leave campaign.
Yes that's always the come back isn't it. I didn't take any notice of the bus the posters etc, I'm far to clever to be manipulated by lies.

The big red bus was a huge turning point in 2016.
That alone will go down in history as one of the reasons leave was much more successful than voting for the status quo. Other things too of course, but that bus spoke to people a bit like the ' labour isnt working' poster that worked for the tories in the 80s. Powerful stuff.
What did remain have? David Cameron and a very reluctant Corbyn!

@Kendodd

I don’t know anyone who took notice of the leave campaign. Yes that's always the come back isn't it. I didn't take any notice of the bus the posters etc, I'm far to clever to be manipulated by lies.

To be fair, I imagine a lot of minds were already made up because ‘Leave’ already had decades of campaigning under its belt by the time the referendum was announced. I can remember the DM frothing about EU regulations in the 90s. Far from reading comments like this as showing how independently-minded leavers are, I just see them as an absolute failure in this country to counter these arguments until it was too late.

@the80sweregreat

The big red bus was a huge turning point in 2016. That alone will go down in history as one of the reasons leave was much more successful than voting for the status quo. Other things too of course, but that bus spoke to people a bit like the ' labour isnt working' poster that worked for the tories in the 80s. Powerful stuff. What did remain have? David Cameron and a very reluctant Corbyn!

This is interesting. Of course after getting elected on that "Labour isn't working" poster and pretending to be worried about unemployment of over 1 million, Thatcher very soon managed to get it over 3 million.

@Bythemillpond - I don’t know what the relationship between owning property and voting leave/ remain is. Not sure what point you are making - as others have said it’s about how people feel, not facts.

I don’t understand how you can say that your leave friends are happy because Europeans have left and they can get jobs. That can only have been in the last year...during Covid. What jobs were they getting? Jobs in warehouses and delivering packages?

Anyone interested in the 1980s ( unemployment, Mrs T, the demise of the trade unions etc) should watch the Dominic Sandbrook documentaries that were repeated on Saturday nights and now on i player. They are Very good and an eye opener to the power of advertising in politics.

@bp300 - I’m too young to have been engaged in politics when Labour wanted more people in university. It doesn’t make much sense that it would have been done to counter the unemployment to be caused by influx of EU migrants though.

Two things:

• do you mean that it was an attempt to upskill the populace to avoid a race to the bottom/ people competing for unskilled work? Isn’t that a good thing, if so.

Second, the UK had the option to delay the opening up or otherwise stagger it. It was a UK choice to open up the way they chose to when the EU expanded, not an imposition from the EU.

The latter bit I learned when studying about the EU and UK laws at university. Not something that most people would have been aware of - that the UK chose to make the benefits system accessible etc to migrants rather than having limitations like you have to be resident for 6m or any other restrictions on people coming in.

@Kendodd - there was a very interesting programme on thé radio which covered how leave were much better prepared because of a theory that Cummings et al subscribed to.

The conclusion was that it was effective for being ‘in battle’ - campaigning etc. But useless for actually governing.

Will try to find a link as it was quite interesting.