Why Brexit may not feel "real"...

[EdwinH]

Perhaps one of the reasons Brexit is so discombobulating is that the UK has rarely had to cope with natural disasters. No earthquakes, volcanoes, or tidal waves. No hurricanes, or certainly none even remotely approaching the fury of those that regularly ravage the Atlantic and Pacific basins.

So, aside from the generation that lived through WW2, none of us have experience of overnight upheaval, of the upending of "normal". That makes the warnings surrounding Brexit seem surreal, or false, depending on your politics - but never immediate, never truly visceral.

Brexit is likely to be equally unreal for most of our politicians, even with just over 60 days to go. Few will have woken in a cold sweat, or felt their gut knot as the reality of our dire situation hits home.

Until Brexit gets real, they will continue to dodge and dither and prevaricate.

Having lived through several Hurricanes here in Florida I can best describe them as a night of terror followed by absolute boredom.

For some reason all the ones who came through my area ( Northeast Florida ) have occurred at night.

There is of course a concern for tornadoes but the greater danger is the winds causing the trees to weaken and come down or else a big tree limb to come down.

I got to experience the " crash and boom " effect. The crash is a tree or tree limb coming down and landing on a power line and the boom is the sound of an electrical transformer exploding. All night long you got to hear this effect spaced about 10 minutes or so apart.

People who get killed usually get killed by a tree coming through their roof or a tree coming down on them when they are trying to drive somewhere.

After the storm the power is off and you may well be blocked in by downed power lines or big trees blocking the roads. Generally then for most people comes the real boredom of having no power and not being able to get out and go anywhere.

Unless you work in some capacity in emergency services you really just have to sit around and wait for help from the outside to arrive, even if you do work in emergency services you may find yourself blocked in as well.

Power will be restored to hospitals, supermarkets, stores, and fast food joints first generally in that order. Individual residences will be restored last starting in urban / suburban areas first and rural areas last.

The power companies will do their best to restore your power as soon as possible, it's in their interest because the longer you go without power the more you learn to live without it.

Hurricane Irma was the most damaging, there were a lot of damaged roofs in my area ( including my own ) and the supermarkets due to damage to the ports had about two thirds to maybe half of what they normally carried.

It took about three weeks to a month for the stores to become fully stocked again. Nobody starved or anything like that, but you couldn't help but be a bit pissed that your favorite items might not be quite so available.

If the U.K. crashes out and things go really south, then while there may be some things it can do to help itself, it may well for the most part have to wait for help from the outside to right itself.

I'm not quite sure how applicable a post-hurricane recovery situation would be to the U.K. post March 29th.

I will say though that while governments can get bogged down in details over policies at times, in an emergency they can be surprisingly quick to respond.

A plausible scenario might be then that a no-deal crash out would be intense but the intensity would be fairly short lived as the government enacts emergency measures to try to correct the damage.

There would of course be lasting damage to the U.K. but it most likely would not be a permanent dystopian nightmare but rather a much diminished place from what it was.

That last line makes me want to cry

OP - I think I understand what you are trying to say.

The threads about mocking and disbelief at stockpiling are a good example - the idea that actually we might need to stock pile and food/medicines might not be available for an extended period doesn't seem real. I am buying more in, but in the back of my mind I do feel like it's pointless, because of course things will be alright and sort out, won't they?

Things are always alright after a couple of days in the UK. The idea of a long period of 'not ok' seems unreal.

Even with the stockpiling threads, the assumption does seem to be that it'll all be sorted and back to normal by May, we just have to get through those few weeks...

I absolutely agree op.

I agree OP.

People in the UK are complacent, because compared to most of the rest of the world, and most other times in history, and many other climates and geologies, it's been pretty stable and peaceful. Which leads people to assume that this is the norm and "just is", for the special us at least - "We are the UK" I've seen somebody type on here, in all seriousness.

Until Brexit gets real, they will continue to dodge and dither and prevaricate

I doubt it, politicians are so removed from our everyday lives that even if Brexit is as dire as it possibly could be, they will still do nothing nor care... in anycase, by then it will be too late.

Only if there is very serious civil unrest will our Government act .... but to save their own skins not ours.

The dilemma for the EU is, as it acts to mitigate the effects of brexit on themselves, it also makes life easier for the UK ... if they go too far, then many in the UK will see little downside to Brexit.

Smiletho-I don’t know about the radio programme but there was a video shared on sm about Syria last year-it was really powerful-showed a family going about everyday events in their house-birthdays etc whilst the news was on the tv in the background. Showed how things can go from fine to awful but also how people carry on as normal to start with.

Yes, I was just discussing this the other day. The UK has essentially had a run of extraordinary good luck. People think ‘bad things won’t happen here’ as though the industrial revolution is some sort of guarantee of continuous stability. Look what happened to Greece over the last few years. On a longer term view, Egypt used to be the most developed nation in the world. The UK is sleepwalking into this because not enough people believe a decline can happen.

@Bathbombs That video has stuck with me since the day I watched it. That is what I am afraid of for my children, and I really am worried Brexit might lead us there.

I am in fact awake at this time of night thinking through what documents it would be useful to have scanned on to a memory stick.

Which feels insane, that I am worrying about that, and yet also like a rational response

I cannot understand the complacency about this.

Some idiots see it as an act of treachery to worry that Brexit could possibly have a negative outcome. Even a short term one. This seems to add to the "it could never happen here" attitude.

The threads about mocking and disbelief at stockpiling are a good example

The simple thing to do on those threads is to ask why the army is stockpiling. Perhaps the army is being unpatriotic and doesn't believe in Brexit hard enough.

I have a friend who lived in Bosnia. She described Sarajevo as a thriving city full of boutiques, great places to eat and socialise etc. People didn't believe that anything could change..

The brexiteers are bizarre.

They actually do think ‘we are the uk’ is some magic spell that means everything is ok.

The only historical event they seem able to recall (wrongly) is the milenium bug.

It’s staggering.

It must be because 'it was all ok 'before'"

I agree OP, I think this explains why despite all the information people are keen to crash out and just want to get on and leave. They just cannot imagine the potential consequences because they have never experienced any real turmoil or hardship in their lives.

Mmmm... for me Brexit not real b/c I don't know (can't see) all the chains that lead from EU trade to me. I can guess. I use an Apple laptop which probably has parts that originated, in various ways, all over the world. My cat has daily medication -- where does that come from? I buy cat's Swedish food from Zooplus, a German company (I think). I'm eating mango, porridge & blueberries with cup of tea. Maybe the milk was processed in Ireland. Besides where did the foods come from, where did all the packaging come from, who drove the delivery lorries, where did the fuel for the lorries come from, and all spare lorry parts? Who oversaw the health & safety regulations, who wrote them using what evidence?

I'm going swimming later; where do the chemicals come from to keep the pool water safe? Energy generated to heat the water may have come from France. No idea where my soap bar-goggles-suit got made.

My whole day is filled with uncertainties about where stuff came from, and not knowing how easily it could be replaced after imposition of huge trade friction.

Some people on my fb though- and these are mostly those 65 plus - seem to be relishing the idea of some hardship ‘solve the obesity crisis- haha’ but at the same time seem convinced that their lives and their children and grandchildren’s lives will be absolutely unchanged.

Why Brexit doesn't feel real, among other things

Thats it ragged - it's hard to realise how bad it will be, because no one is being honest, and I don't really know what I'm prepping for.

I mentioned on another thread about prepping that was talking about the WWII that eggs were hard to come by, not because eggs bought in the UK before WWII were imported, but because the chicken feed was, so hens had to be slaughtered due to lack of food for them, and therefore we had an egg shortage. If in 1939 I knew that most of the eggs sold in the UK were laid in the UK, I would presume that eggs were a food that wouldn't be rationed.

I just know enough that it might get terrible, but not really how bad, which areas will be hit, and how long for.

@UnnecessaryFennel good article. The Normality Bias is one that keeps coming to mind in all the Brexit complacency.

This is why 7 out of 10 people sat calmly on a crashed plane watching the flames come for them while 1 person in 10 flipped out completely and only 2 in 10 headed foe the exits. The 70% refused to believe that bad things can happen simply because they had never happened before.