Is Anybody Making Personal Plans For Brexit?

[fakenamefornow]

Very worried about it.

I have some savings, not loads, just a few thousand. I'm thinking maybe I should convert it into foreign currency. What do others think? I have a holiday aboard planned next year, I've converted all the spending money we'll need already and plan to pay for meals etc while we're there in cash.

I've been saving as much money as I can, our mortgage still has another eight years to run. I really need a new car and we had planned to get a new kitchen as ours is falling apart but don't think I can risk spending money on stuff like that now. At the same time I want to take my children abroad as much as we can now as I don't think we'll be able to afford to post 2019.

I wish we could leave the country for the EU but it's just not easy for us, no access to foreign passports, children settled in really good schools, and not easily transferable jobs.

For context, I'll almost certainly be losing my job because of Brexit in 2019, not sure what will happen with my husbands job, don't think he'll lose it but it will be negatively affected.

Is anybody else making plans to try to mitigate Brexit? If so any more suggestions for us?

cowgirl I have no idea what people may or may not have done to support devastated industrial communities. I was a child when all this was going on - I spend one year in the UK and then went home, where my political awareness was focused on the things going on in my own country.

I absolutely understand that a lot of people voted Leave out of anger. That doesn't mean they are not the ones who are going to be worst affected by leaving the EU. And that makes me sad.

Even weirder. I actually feel quite sorry for our politicians at the moment. They are trying to deliver the impossible that the electorate have been promised, they know Brexit will be damaging, even risks the peace in NI. I know they've put themselves up for this, but still. I think Brexit could be the end of the Tory party, when the affects have started to fully unfold. I believe a new party will emerge, just the same as the Tories, in the same way the Liberal party evolved into the SDP and then the Liberal Democrats.

I don't feel sorry for the Tories at all. We wouldn't have had brexit without them.

But I think if they dissolve in the acid of their own making they will be replaced by two or three other parties.

If it's the end of the Tories a lot of people will think it was well worth leaving the EU.

Your working on the chaos theory that Steve Brannon espouses then.
Except he causes the chaos to profit from it as is the won't of hard Brexiters who are advised by the legatum institute. Their parent company likes disaster capitalism.

Another one who moved south because my home community was devastated by Thatcher. With a family whose livelihood depended on textiles I can assure cowgirl that I could not be more painfully aware of the consequences and yes my community too is set in beautiful countryside with a very rich cultural and political history. In fact most of my remain voting London professional / city worker friends were first generation exciles from similar communities (mining community in the valleys, dockworkers Liverpool, Mining Barnsley, shipbuilding Tyne to name a few). You are right cowgirls, we should not be divided, but you seem to want to reinforce false divisions. None of us are unaware of what has happened to our communities, I still have cousins attending schools with some of the worst outcomes in the country especially for white working class boys who draw from some of the worst and most notorious public housing estates in the country. One thing I am absolutely sure of is that the answers have nothing to do with Brexit which has the power to drain the public purse of all funds that should be going towards solutions. Example, improving educational opportunity through something akin to the London challenge (professionals working at the coal face developing practical strategies and sharing best practise). Another example, investment in infrastructure to attract the sort of Science and Tech development we are seeing grow spontaneously beyond all infrastructure provision around Oxford and Cambridge. roads to draw in communities like Barnsley and Hull to hubs around the strength in Science and tech in Leeds Manchester and Sheffield.

Ain't going to happen because

1. The conservatives are not interested in long term infrastructure planning or tackling inequality

1. They are not going to have the money to do it as the high paying high tax yield jobs like my DHs and I 's are moved overseas.

You do not make poor areas better off by making wealthy areas less able to generate money. Like it or not Thatcher made us into a service economy and 70% of the economy relies on sectors of the economy for whom membership of the EU is an important part of their competitive advantage, which is why they will move jobs overseas. This is not a might, it is a will, I am seeing it in business plans on a daily basis now.

*won't = want

I absolutely don't want there to be divisions. That's precisely why I am going against the grain here.

@cowgirls

If the Tories are replaced by the Corbynistas - who themselves predict a run on the pound if they are elected - the Brexit debacle will look like a storm in a teacup.

Hard left, economically incompetent government, with a radical nationalising agenda freed from EU rules on state intervention. Now that really will be interesting. And exactly what Jeremy was plotting with his lukewarm support for remain.

I also agree that the answers to their problems do not lie with Brexit. It was a case of desperate times, desperate measures. An opportunity to show the political and financial elite that we are here and we matter. The politicians thought that the public would do as they were told, but that didn't happen, and so here we are.

I agree the plans to nationalise some industries and services.

Fionn the Labour party's current policies are hardly 'Hard Left'. Those policies are pretty normal social democratic policy in quite a few countries in Europe. It's just that the UK has become so stuck in the hard capitalist model that it politicians and its people have developed a skewed perception of what extreme left really means.

And it has already been established that it would be perfectly possible to re-nationalise things like the railways within the framework of what EU rules allow.

@TheElementsSong @squishysquirmy I imagine tinned chickpeas at least would be extremely handy in an underground bunker.

Tinned chickpeas are really useful to have. Ditto tinned lentils and other pulses - packed with protein, easy to prepare. (Have a vegetarian DD who loves curry).

Cowgirls,
I don't think that people now (middle class or otherwise) losing their jobs is going to undo the damage done to mining communities, nor will it do anything to make life better for those communities now. Quite the opposite.

You know what might help communities still suffering from the effects, decades later, of a collapse in the industry that supported their town?
Regeneration, and a distribution of money in the UK away from the richer areas (like London) towards more disadvantaged areas.

The EU development fund was not always spent in the best way. But at least it was some money targeted towards those areas most in need of it. It was not all opera houses and parks, it also paid for transport, education, and infrastructure.
It sought to redress "the main regional imbalances in the European Union through the sustainable development and structural adjustment of regional economies, including the conversion of declining industrial regions and regions whose development is lagging behind."
Some of the taxes we paid was spent via the EU on the poorest areas of the UK.

Does anyone honestly believe that our government will continue to spend this money in these areas? Or do you think that the money it "saves"* from Brexit will be earmarked for other purposes?

• I am pretty certain that the negative economic effects of Brexit will eclipse our membership fee anyway.

I still,don't understand why, because no one has cared for communities that have decimated by and have been told to just get on with it,
Why now that Brexit with no deal is looming, it's OK to tell everyone to just get in with it?

Surely, if we can see that some communities still haven't recovered (and I live in the NE so I can see plenty of those around me!), then we should know that this is not the right way to go.
And that 'just getting in with things' isn't the answer

Caring for those communities who are still struggling to recover from the Thatcher years etc... doesn't mean you can't care about Brexit.
Esp as, let's face it, those sommunities will be the ones who will be hit hard. Again.

I'm also at loss as why it will be the middle class that will be more affected by Brexit.
DONT be fooled, if the MC is loosing their buying power and stop buying, that means less jobs for the WC and those with the lower wages etc...
Everyone will be hit. Not just the MC.

Actually I suspect it's people at the lower end of the spectrum, those on MW etc.. that will be hit the hardest.

Not a chance of our government spending money in those areas even if there is any left, imho. A conversation I did have with my NE dwelling, leave voting ILs.

Sorry pressed enter too soon

They will be hit the hardest because an economy going down hill means less revenue for the givernemnet and so less money for the NHS, education, roads, benefits system etc...
The Ines who will struggle with that are the Ines with less money in the first place that won't be able to afford private health care, private school or to live wo any WTC and the likes....

squishy I don't disagree that Brexit will affect these areas of disadvantage. I have said as much throughout this thread. It was interesting though to hear a Welsh man talking about this very issue on the radio today. He was reminded that although Wales benefited from EU money Wales was strongly pro leave. He reasoned that the EU money was money that the UK had contributed in the first place and that it was simply redistributed back to them (he may have said recycled). That is the mindset of a lot of people in these areas. They are so far removed from the EU machine that they can't comprehend the benefit they get from it.

I don't disagree with anything you have said Lewis but many people voted leave knowing this but still wanting to give the political elite a kicking.

People voted leave for a variety of reasons.
Some of those reasons were more stupid than others.
That is not to say that all leave voters who voted against their own interests were stupid - sometimes very clever people make very stupid decisions.
But when you say "many people voted leave knowing this but still wanting to give the political elite a kicking", I admit that I think this sounds like a stupid thing to do.
Not least because the real "elites" (depending on how you define them) will be the ones best able to weather the storm. Many prominent Brexiteers are incredibly wealthy, privileged people. And of course many prominent remainers are also incredibly wealthy and privileged. The Brexit divide has never been a clear split of "real people" versus "elites", no matter the rhetoric.
Concern over food imports is not limited to avocados and prosseco, concern over jobs is not limited to bankers and middle class jobs, and concern over loosing EU rights is not limited to concern over "Tarquin's gap yah" despite some (often very successful) attempts to dismiss them as such.

The issues are indeed very complex and most if not everybody couldn't grasp every issue and the potential consequences. That's why I think a lot of voters based their decision on their emotional response.

Just got French Naturalisation. But the financial consequences for me are vast already.

Regeneration, and a distribution of money in the UK away from the richer areas (like London) towards more disadvantaged areas.

Indeed so, like upgrade the rail links between Liverpool/Manchester and Leeds/Hull. Electrify the link from Birmingham via Sheffield and link with the electrified East Coast Main line. Cancel HS2 which won't have the effect of taking work north, but will bring the Midlands within an easier commute of London. But how do people like us bring all that sort of thing about?

As for people arguing that they voted Leave because EU money was ours in the first place, so it's just money coming back to them - well the rail issue I have just listed shows where the Government will chose to redistribute the money.