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).

Oh but I am annoyed that I couldn’t get my usual next day coffee delivery. I just ordered a smaller pack in the end but I did rage for at least a couple of seconds before I found the Opp Side.

@LadyWithLapdog

OP I agree. I’m saddened my DCs lives will be more constrained than mine and that it was down to fear and hate for foreigners.

No it wasn’t. It was down to not wanting twats like Ursula von der Leyen having a say in how our country is run.

No one can tell you what the point of it all is, OP, or what we’ve gained; they can only turn out to mock you. It’s all they have and these threads always go the same way.

Some Leavers will welcome more immigration from the rest of the world, which we never needed to restrict - it was a choice. But I wouldn't mind betting that more will be annoyed at Russians, more Hindus and so on. Farage knew exactly what he was doing with his Breaking Point poster - he knew exactly how to push people's buttons. But much of the anger was misdirected at the EU when the blame should fairly and squarely been on Cameron and chums. Who are still wealthy, and won't be queuing up at the food bank any time soon, although Cameron might have lost money with his Greensill exploits instead of making shed loads of money.

[quote Schonerlebnis]**@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland* and @ScarletZebra* I live in a crappy northern town. The reason why life is so shit for many up here has nothing to do with an oversupply of foreign labour. The ones who voted leave in 2016 and then for the tories in 2019 for the first time think it is; sadly it's more to do with austerity and underinvestment by successive governments- leaving the EU won't make a jot of difference. Let's see how well Boris' levelling up does....[/quote]
It's interesting how austerity has been forgotten in all this. Austerity is the reason so many communities suffered pre-Brexit. Yet the Tories have got away with it by deflecting all the attention on Europe. They always manage to get away with things, why do people continue to believe them?

I think its time people accept if and learn to adapt as creating yet another post on mumsnet isn't changing anything
People used to regularly go to nee york for a shopping trip and aren't to bother by the duties
Maybe campaigning for a higher gift/ personal use value would be more affective and something that could potentially be looked at and changed , brexit can't be

Ursula von der Leyen having a say in how our country is run.

Because she was around in 2016.

She wasn’t. Just kid yourself that that was the issue.

@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!

Of course brexit has affected normal, working people. Lots of them work for companies which import/export goods. Delays and increased expense/reduced profits will have an effect on the company which in turn impacts the workers.

You don’t need to buy diamonds in Amsterdam to feel the impact.

It was down to not wanting twats like Ursula von der Leyen having a say in how our country is run.

I seem to remember it was Juncker who was the bogey man, but he's gone now. Never mind we have Johnson which must be a bonus. Good job he finally ditched Cummings, but it took some time.

@adrianmolesmole exactly.

People shopping in Paris, buying diamonds and having do produce paperwork or whatever in order to take their dogs abroad on holiday are hardly everyday problems for the vast majority of us, are they?

At least the fishermen are happy with it all.

I totally agree re: austerity.

And it pissed me off that 49% of the country is so bent out of shape pointing it's fingers at the "uneducated, thick racist northern gammon brexit voter" that they've forgotten who really fucked our country up. The fucking Tories.

@Hoorayforsunshine

Ursula von der Leyen having a say in how our country is run.

Because she was around in 2016.

She wasn’t. Just kid yourself that that was the issue.

The original quote said ‘like’.

They always manage to get away with things, why do people continue to believe them?

God knows - they even wanted more of it. As if Johnson, Rees-Mogg and all the other wealthy predominantly men in Johnson's Cabinet give a stuff about ordinary people. Johnson is whinging that he can't manage on his £150,000 salary. A lot of people would think they were in clover if they earned a fifth of that.

Isn’t there a UK sausage company that has had to move production to Germany because exporting the UK pork to Germany was too complicated?

It’s not the stuff of diamonds. Your sausage bap is impacted because pork has to go through 23 steps into and out of Europe where previously it had one step.

Literally 23 steps.

@ReceptacleForTheRespectable and @Peregrina yes.

I get why rich people might vote Tory. Self interest, I think it’s selfish but I get it. I don’t like paying higher rate tax but I wouldn’t vote for someone who got rid of it because I agree with the principle of those who can afford it should pay more.

I do not understand working class Tories. Or anyone not ‘rich’. It’s not self interest and it can’t be family values (cf shagger Boris). Is it just that we are destined to always look up to our ‘betters’ as the likes of Rees Mogg think they are? Do people even understand what they want to do to this country?

@Newrumpus it did say ‘like’. But as a pp pointed out, there was a previous bogey man and there will always be another.

Perhaps because I can recall European travel in pre-EEC days, I am not overly bothered. Trips to Paris (via ferry or BEA if you could afford it, remember) were perfectly possible. Customs duties were another tax but, if you kept spending within bounds, not an issue. Sorry, OP while I voted remain, I don't see this as a major problem.

But doesn’t the world want there to be 22 less steps? As in, you are actually more eco friendly having a locally bred sausage sandwich than avocado on toast in London?

Change always affects some adversely. It's not that long ago that this country had thriving garment and shipbuilding industries and now they're all but gone.

But I still believe that Britain was the patsy in the EU; we paid lots, we solved the other countries' unemployment problems by acting as somewhere their people could come and get work (and benefits), the system was designed to mutually benefit France and Germany, not us, we were often ignored, overruled and the promises made to us weren't worth the water they were written on, and fundamentally we were being dragged into a United States of Europe which few of us wanted.

But I also believe that nothing is static and that three months of effective Brexit is not going to be the way it is for all time. I think that in a couple of years it will all look very different.

BTW, though I am a lot older than Eurostar, I've never been on it, perhaps because I live nowhere near London. I was once waiting for a train when changing at Crewe when a Eurostar on test pulled in. That must have been in the late 90s, shortly before the idea of running Eurostar north of London was canned (though there was a Eurostar lounge at Crewe for several years after that standing unused). Perhaps if the rest of the country had benefitted in the way that London did, the referendum might have gone a different way.

@Hoorayforsunshine I don’t understand the support for this Gvnmt either. Bunch of shysters.

It's fucking awful for my DBro business. He is having to relocate 90% of his business to Spain to make it viable and will have to make 34 people redundant. It's heart breaking as he will hate it.

@TalbotAMan his business is in Lancashire so hence fucking up the North.

Ref for the sausage - (link to report in the tweet) mobile.twitter.com/davidheniguk/status/1374800008097193985

Regarding whether the world wants there to be 22 fewer steps @OppsUpsSide, the pork is produced in the UK and not processed or made into sausages here. I don’t know why but the company have not decided to do that but move everything to within the EU. Maybe we lack the facilities or it costs too much in labour here - lots of things can’t just switch immediately because there isn’t the infrastructure.

Regarding local food and food miles, it depends. A local piece of food grown with lots of fertilisers and in food tunnels can create more CO2 than something from elsewhere. Usually it’s most carbon efficient to buy the food that is from somewhere where it is produced more easily if you can ship rather than fly.

For example, NZ lamb is lower in carbon than Welsh lamb, even after you include the carbon involved in shipping it from NZ to here. So it’s complicated - and irrelevant to the question of whether trade/ the economy wants there to be 23 steps, which it doesn’t (because the economy doesn’t price in carbon and the environment effectively yet).