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).

Or are the EU going to make it impossible for a British person to travel around Europe ever again. Possibly I think ATT the gloves are off going by the vaccination issues in Europe. The death toll in Italy, France, Germany, Poland, today is very high.
I know I know the EU did snooze so therefore they lose.

Anyway, support the UK. That will make life better.

I would love to see you do that with the clothes you wear. Pull any six items out of your wardrobe or chest of drawers and I guarantee that at least one will have been made in the Far East.

I have just tried the experiment with the first six items pulled out of a drawer: three made in Bangladesh, two made in Cambodia and one item from India.

You want to try living in NI. The effect here has been dreadful. We can't even buy goods from GB now as its a bureaucratic mess to ship from mainland to here. Customs of sorts for some things coming in from England but it seems random so far. Many companies just won't ship to here now and some internationals have closed their offices/depots here. The effects are already horrific on prices.

I have just tried the experiment with the first six items pulled out of a drawer: three made in Bangladesh, two made in Cambodia and one item from India.

Ah, but most of them used to be British, so that's alright then...

@Emeraldshamrock

Or are the EU going to make it impossible for a British person to travel around Europe ever again. Possibly I think ATT the gloves are off going by the vaccination issues in Europe. The death toll in Italy, France, Germany, Poland, today is very high. I know I know the EU did snooze so therefore they lose.

This shows limited understanding of the fact that nation states make their own visa decisions.

Germany for example has the strictest rules on convictions from third countries currently.

We have opted to be a third country.

But people blindly blame the EU without comprehending that nation states make their own rules, as could we!

Utter tripe, anyone with any sense would agree that you cannot realisticly assess the effects of brexit during the pandemic. Op, there is no way the UK could have procured the vaccine in the way they have, had they been under EU control. The UK's vaccine roll out is the envy of the world now.

The UK's vaccine roll out is the envy of the world now.

I thought it was Israel.

I assume this will be now used all the time for years to come "but our vaccine roll out". Fair enough, it's good credit where it's due, but 1 good thing just doesn't beat hundred not so good ones

I thought it was Israel too.

Yes Israel is number one, not to say we are not doing a fantastic job.

This doesn't make up for Brexit or the highest covid death rate in Europe.

@Peregrina

This has a disproportionately negative effect on poorer communities

In the main it didn't. London saw many of the immigrants and London voted Remain.

Sunderland was the first to declare the result for Leave. This link shows how much immigration each area had in 2017. Sunderland had 1% of non-British nationals. Liverpool, if I recall correctly, a Remain voting area had 9% of non-British nationals. My area has 11% of non British nationals and we were a Remain area.

I will grant that Boston in Lincolnshire did have a very high proportion of non-British nationals, so the statement is true for them and for parts of Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. Other leave voting areas like Cornwall have negligible numbers. But how many of the problems were caused by the Cameron/Osborrne austerity?

Even so, if you follow the links, twice as many non-British were from the rest of the world as opposed to being born in the EU.

Figures are from the ONS so should be reliable.

The link between EU immigration and the vote to leave is not as clear cut as some posters like believe.

Israel is the world leader if you do proportion of population. USA and India if it’s numbers vaccinated. UAE is up there too.

EU had no effect on our vaccination programme. It was nothing to do with whether we remained or left.

Our mortality is pretty world beating though.

The link between EU immigration and the vote to leave is not as clear cut as some posters like believe.

I think that is true but I also think that people believed that the people arriving via Europe would be stopped by Brexit, which of course hasn't and won't happen.

I think people also thought there would be more money, 350 mil per week on the side of the bus to invest which was needed due to a decade of austerity.

I think we will never really know about the money as the covid debt will be the cover for that. The fact that there has been a lot of waste of tax payers money during the pandemic and austerity remains, as do the refugees will pass people by, covid is a fantastic coverup.

@lifeturnsonadime

Yes Israel is number one, not to say we are not doing a fantastic job.

This doesn't make up for Brexit or the highest covid death rate in Europe.

The UK doesn't have the highest death rate in Europe (looking at deaths per million).

You’re timing is shite op.

The UK doesn't have the highest death rate in Europe (looking at deaths per million).

Apologies you are right it has changed since the start of this year and I hadn't picked up on the fact.

Paris alone had c. 13m tourists from the UK each year.

@Kendodd

I hope our young people never forgive those who took away their rights as EU citizens.

Is this really a right as such?

Any country could choose to leave the EU, and members of other states within it would no longer have any "right" to go there.

Talking about rights out rights outside of the nation state is always kind of dodgy as to what it really means.

That's emblematic in a way of some of the problems the EU has had, and why some factions would like a closer association.

My mother had the right, as a Commonwealth citizen, to go live in the UK. I don't, the UK decided that they didn't want that any more.

Do you think they were within their rights to make that decision, or are you stumping for every citizen of a commonwealth country to be able to move there?

The link between EU immigration and the vote to leave is not as clear cut as some posters like believe.

I was specifically answering the poster who said this:

This has a disproportionately negative effect on poorer communities who have seen increased competition for jobs, wages undercut, increased competition for school places, increased difficulty accessing healthcare, overcrowded public transport, skyrocketing house prices... the list goes on an on and on.

It may be true for Boston, parts of Norfolk and Cambs, but it most certainly isn't the case for just about all the other Leave voting areas. As for house prices, they are rocketing in London and the South East, but London voted Remain.

Things like lack of public transport are almost certainly due to the fit of 'deregulation' a.k.a privatisation which happened a couple of decades ago. I can give an example of the sort of thing which happened: Sheffield, Barnsley and Leeds used to share a service serving the three cities and co-operated so that buses were spaced out with the Sheffield transport putting one bus on, followed by Barnsley 20 minutes later and Leeds 20 minutes after that, so that no one rocking up to the town centre bus station had to wait more than 20 minutes for the service. Once privatised - they all tried to put on the service on the hour - so three buses almost at once, and then a wait for another hour. I have no idea how it shook out because I left the area. Greater Manchester is taking back its bus services, I believe. The point of all this - lack of public transport was due to a political ideology and had nothing to do with either the EU or immigration. This was the "privatise and compete at all costs" mentality.

@LizzieMacQueen

I agree OP. It's quite common to buy pieces on holiday such as jewellery eg diamonds in Amsterdam. Obviously not every day but perhaps for a special anniversary. I also had to rethink buying a handbag from a german manufacturer as 1) import duties and 2) inconvenience & cost if I had wanted to return it.

GB has become a smaller place. Please oh please don't let Scotland gain independence!

I'm praying we DO get Independence. It 'd be so wonderful for us to be free of a morally, and practically, corrupt government with a FPTP voting system that will make sure the Tories stay in power for the forseeable future, and for us to rejoin the EU. Bring it on, Nicola!

I agree that shopping from EU countries is just not worth it in the meantime. I used to do a lot of online shopping in the EU, but I'm not prepared to risk big charges for doing so. Also, I've noticed lots of EU firms have notices now on their websites that they won't supply the UK

No Bosnia, Slovenia, Czechia, Belgium have higher rates per capita. We could feel a bit smug until you look at comparative wealth of those countries. U.K. comes in just behind Germany as second wealthiest nation in Europe. Bosnia is 35th, Slovenia 30th, Hungary 23rd. Our GDP is about 12 times that of Bosnia. Given Covid is a disease impacted by poverty, you’d think we’d have the very lowest death rate but our mismanagement caused thousands of unnecessary deaths.

@Peregrina

The link between EU immigration and the vote to leave is not as clear cut as some posters like believe.

I was specifically answering the poster who said this:

This has a disproportionately negative effect on poorer communities who have seen increased competition for jobs, wages undercut, increased competition for school places, increased difficulty accessing healthcare, overcrowded public transport, skyrocketing house prices... the list goes on an on and on.

It may be true for Boston, parts of Norfolk and Cambs, but it most certainly isn't the case for just about all the other Leave voting areas. As for house prices, they are rocketing in London and the South East, but London voted Remain.

Things like lack of public transport are almost certainly due to the fit of 'deregulation' a.k.a privatisation which happened a couple of decades ago. I can give an example of the sort of thing which happened: Sheffield, Barnsley and Leeds used to share a service serving the three cities and co-operated so that buses were spaced out with the Sheffield transport putting one bus on, followed by Barnsley 20 minutes later and Leeds 20 minutes after that, so that no one rocking up to the town centre bus station had to wait more than 20 minutes for the service. Once privatised - they all tried to put on the service on the hour - so three buses almost at once, and then a wait for another hour. I have no idea how it shook out because I left the area. Greater Manchester is taking back its bus services, I believe. The point of all this - lack of public transport was due to a political ideology and had nothing to do with either the EU or immigration. This was the "privatise and compete at all costs" mentality.

The fact that you don't see the link between the EU and the privatisation of public services suggests that you don't fully understand how the EU operates. I researched the EU a lot before deciding how to vote.

Good article here by John King:
www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/john-king-left-wing-case-leaving-eu

Good article here by John King:

It's really not...

I can't pretend that I find that a 'good article' - it's just a standard Lexiter rant.

This in particular stood out:
The NHS would be targeted by US health-care companies and trade union rights threatened. Both of those targetted by the Tory Government - with Liz Truss itching to do trade with the US, which might well see the chlorinated chicken and hormone fed beef. Also very happy to see workers rights reduced. Nothing to do with an EU conspiracy.

This was a betrayal of the Commonwealth, which a mere 28 years earlier had fought with us against two of these countries, the then fascist Germany and Italy.

Good of him to big up the Commonwealth when it suits - they usually get written out of 'Britain stood alone' narrative. I suspect in reality that he is talking of the White Commonwealth - he's not really talking about Indian regiments who fought along side us. What really saved our bacon was Hitler's stupidity in going to war with Russia - that is where the most severe fighting happened.

I am prepared to go along with a statement that the Brexit we have is much worse than it might have been due to Cameron's cowardice, May's Red Lines and Johnson being a lying piss-poor negotiator. But he couldn't make that statement back in 2015 because May and Johnson weren't in the frame.

It won't be for the EU to make the decision it is the sovereign nations who get to determine their own visa arrangements

But how would they check? If one country lets you in then you can travel around Europe quite freely.

@MadMadMadamMim

Maybe you'll have to shop in London from now on then. Instead of Paris.

Tragic.

Yes let's celebrate having reduced access to the world. Hurrah!