How scared are you of brexit?

[onegrapeshortofabunch]

Because I’m trying to work out if I’m a normal amount of scared or if I’m losing it.

I’m terrified of the recession that is looming after brexit, increased food prices, reduced public spending, which will lead to more homelessness and misery and perhaps even more violence on the streets. I’m terrified of the NHS being privatised, of not having access to cheap fruit and vegetables, of not being able to travel to europe.

Perhaps most of all I’m scared of a return to the troubles in Northern Ireland. I can’t velieve people would rather have a border than a backstop.

I’m scared of the way Eu migrants are being treated and how normal it has become for the Eu to be hated and mocked and blamed for everything. I’m scared of what this is doing to my friends, my colleagues, my community. I feel complicit and I don’t know how to protest or complain.

I’m a Londoner, and I’m scared of the ‘metropolitan elite’ conspiracy theories that both the left and the right seen to hold about people like me (I guess I’m what could be called ‘a centrist’). It makes me scared to talk about any of this.

I’m terrified for the future of our country, for my son’s future, for my elderly parents’ future, for our jobs. We are small, community minded people with small incomes. I spend a lot of my time volunteering in the local community. I feel like I should have been getting rich and hoarding money instead because it’s all going to be dog eat dog very soon.

I am losing sleep. I can’t concentrate at work. I find myself bursting into tears and getting angry for no reason other than a total; overwhelming fear of the future. I feel like my future has been taken away. Am i going mad? Or is it just the uncertainty? Or am I really part of an elite that can’t handle change?

For what it’s worth, I think the Eu needs to reform and the uk needs a big political shake up. But I think brexit is going to make all our problems worse, not better.

Does anyone else feel this way?

I've been prepping for the last few weeks.
The way I look at it (as others have said) if there are shortages, then we are slightly better prepared. I like feeling organised and it's all things which will get used eventually.

I just want to know what's going to happen one way or another! In limbo at the moment.

I do a lot of online shopping to the UK. There's so many great things in the UK that I can't get at home in Ireland. For example I order vape supplies from an English online shop. The vape juice I love I can only find in the UK. I order hobby supplies regularly from the UK. I order online from an English pharmacy because the shampoo that helps me, I can only find in the UK.

I spend approx 100 euro a month on vape supplies. If the UK crashes out of the EU without a deal, it means all that will become more expensive. I did some sums and maths. If I was to order from the UK, it will be like ordering from America or outside the EU (something that I don't do). A customs tax would have to be applied to purchases.

Taking my average monthly spend on vape supplies that is 100 euro. A custom tax on this- I don't know how much a custom tax would be but I will take an estimate of 12.5% so that would be 112.50 euro. VAT would have to be applied on top of this and I'm looking at a cost of very near 140 euro a month. That's just one example. Very much not looking forward to a Brexit and especially a no deal Brexit.

Are we REALLY going to be short of loo roll? Really? Well, if we are, I'll just stamp my feet and shimmy after a wee.....

I am getting stressed however due to previous trauma I hate change so am trying to tell myself it's just that side of things talking. As I have a 7 month old, we are stocking up on certain things just in case though.

We live in Scotland and I already have quite a few friends pushing for independence and I think that will only get worse.

My MiL is from Northern Ireland and again, the language we have heard from some family members is getting increasingly militant. Various dead relatives who were killed during the Troubles are getting brought up more and more frequently.

I don't see the United Kingdom staying particularly united from this point forward. Certainly some of the comments from my own English Brexit voting relatives to my Scottish/NI husband have revolted me. Hearing them talk makes a compelling argument for Scottish Independence all by itself.

I am just heartbroken. What I see ahead for us is an entirely self-inflicted coarsening and diminishing of all the things I believe really were great about Britain, to be replaced by an abhorrent narrative of whinging and victimhood from people who are so bitter about the things they don't have that they can't see just how much they had.

Are we REALLY going to be short of loo roll? Really? Well, if we are, I'll just stamp my feet and shimmy after a wee.....

Can’t wait to see how this approach works after a poo...

What I can't bear the most is listening to people saying they're glad now that the EU won't be able to tell us what size we can grow our vegetables. The thing is, if they had ever seen the farming practices in countries where there are no such regulations, they would understand how the EU was trying to protect us. Farmers in some countries without such regulations use unhealthy levels of hormone-rich fertilizer and dangerous levels of insecticide in order to grow large, beautiful, juicy looking fruit and veg. I'd rather a puny little tomato that wasn't dangerously artificially enhanced than the kind of outrageously unnatural thing that is available in some non-EU countries.

Here is what I found about real toilet paper shortages courtesy of the The Honolulu Advisor from 1999 ;

" By Curtis Lum
Advertiser Staff Writer
History has shown that the threatened statewide dock strike this week could be a crippling blow to the state’s already struggling economy.

Hawaii is almost totally dependent on the shipping industry, with about 90 percent of the goods consumed here brought in by ships. Two lengthy dock strikes in the 1940s and 1970s proved how vulnerable the islands can be.

One of the most costliest strikes began on May 1, 1949, when 2,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) walked off their jobs over a pay dispute. The strike, which lasted 178 days, came as the state was recovering from a 1946 statewide strike by plantation workers.

The 1949 strike forced many small businesses to go bankrupt because they could not receive goods from the Mainland. At that time, there were very few airlines serving the islands.

Unemployment soared, food shortages developed, sugar and canned pineapple sat in warehouses, and the community was divided by anti-union sentiment. Violence erupted on several occasions, including one event in July 1949 when hundreds of picketers stormed the non-union hiring hall of the Hawaii Stevedores.

The workers had sought wages comparable to West Coast workers (a raise of about 32 cents an hour), but when the strike was finally settled, the laborers agreed to an increase of just 14 cents an hour.

The great West Coast dock strike of 1971 will long be remembered by local residents as the year that toilet paper rolls went empty.

The strike began on July 1, when 15,000 dock workers in 24 ports on the West Coast walked off their jobs. The work stoppage spanned 134 days.

As in 1949, store shelves slowly went bare, businesses crumbled and people lost their jobs. But one of the rarest commodities at that time was toilet paper because residents hoarded rolls as supplies began to dwindle.

The strike was temporarily halted in October 1971 when President Nixon invoked the Taft-Hartley Act. But the 80-day cooling off period expired on Christmas Day and the dockers resumed the strike on January 17, 1972.

In February 1972, negotiators for the ILWU and the employers, Pacific Maritime Association, reached a tentative agreement that brought the strike to an end. ".

Fruitcider At least there’s a plus side if we’re we don’t get some drugs then

It would probably be mentally and perhaps physically unpleasant but to my knowledge no one ever died because they didn't have any toilet paper.

I suppose if you are made of stronger stuff you could do what British and American POW's did in Singapore during WW2. Due to extreme shortages of toilet paper and their more valued use as good cigarette paper, if you were right-handed you used your left hand as a mechanical bidet, splashing your unmentionable areas with water.

Due to a general lack of soap, you then ate with your right-hand, never your left. You reversed this process if you were left-handed.

I do hope the U.K. doesn't have to come to this.

It occurred to me that using a small squirt gun filled with warm water might be a better way than just using one of your hands.

More than likely some toilet paper will be available but perhaps not the kind you would prefer.

Okay, I'm getting off this rather unpleasant subject.

If toilet paper is your issue there are alternatives. Not what we are used to but alternatives.
Wash away wee only "residue " with water using a jug or a travel bidet squirty thing. Even an old mini drinks bottle filled with water. Dry with a small piece of fabric. Toss used fabric piece in a dedicated bag or bucket with a lid. Wash used fabric pieces on a high temperature .

Save toilet paper for poo.

Obviously you can deploy the water/cloth thing for poo but that might be a "hard sell".

Other countries do this sort of thing routinely.

It's a strategy. Not like regular access to toilet paper but if you are afraid of it running low and that is making you fearful generally, here's a suggested approach.

I had a comforting thought earlier. There are over 3m EU citizens living in the UK. The EU is going to want to make sure their people are OK, so if there are are serious and life threatening issues they will work with the UK to resolve them rather than just abandon its own people?

Whistles in dark

I'm thinking old newspaper and magazines like in the olden days.

As a school governor, I'm terrified of a reduction in funding. We're stuffed anyway as they shelved the fairer funding scheme in the week after the referendum. If we have any less funding we will have to have less teaching.

I had a comforting thought earlier. There are over 3m EU citizens living in the UK. The EU is going to want to make sure their people are OK, so if there are are serious and life threatening issues they will work with the UK to resolve them rather than just abandon its own people?

That would be the responsibility of each individual country to take care of its own nationals. The same as if a Brit gets into trouble abroad, the UK is responsible for helping them, not the EU. In a natural disaster or civil unrest abroad, each country tries to get its own people out. The EU doesn't come in to try to save everyone because there are nationals of EU member states present.

Remember that the UK is an EU country at present, it's not a 'them vs us' situation. Other individual EU countries don't think of themselves as, say, EU first and French second, or whatever.

IIRC They will help in some cases (not really relevant to this)...Like in some small/island countries (I’m thinking of when I went to Cape Verde) they don’t have an embassy/consulate for each EU nation. In an emergency another EU consulate will give you some help.

I think if things get that bad EU countries (particularly the poorer one where lots of young people go abroad to work) will give lots of incentives for people who want to ‘go home’

@ItStartedWithAKiss241 I cannot imagine the government allowing a shortage of fruit and veg? Surely they will pay ridiculous amounts of import tax before it affects us?

The government doesn't pay import tax on our imports, they charge it to the importer. The importer then increases their prices to their customers to cover their increased cost. We end up paying the taxes (import duty, 'the tariff') as an increase in the price of goods in the shops.

As for the government 'allowing a shortage of fruit and veg', they're pretty much powerless to stop it unless they come up with a plan to get trucks through the port at Dover without delays.

I'm thinking old newspaper and magazines like in the olden days.

I'm saving my copy of Wetherspoon News for that very task.

@FishesaPlenty , sadly my copy is too full of shit already

@bellinisurge

🤣bellinisurge, very good!
I am very very scared of the future, what it will hold.... I was always so complacent about living in a ‘sensible’ country. DH, who came originally from a country which has properly imploded, keeps trying to reassure me that at least there hopefully won’t be any mass murders here as a result....

I'm a little scared - we have a baby due in March. I've got a small stockpile but probably need to add to it. I'm resourceful and hard working so I'm sure we will survive but there is a cloud over what should be an exciting time.

I'm fucking fuming that we're having to have discussions about loo roll in peacetime 2019.

It's anxious times for sure

Angry.
So fecked off, actually.

Forgive me as I know little but I cannot imagine the government allowing a shortage of fruit and veg?

Oh this government? They're total assholes. Shortage of food is just the tip of the iceberg. The lunatics are running the asylum.

This is the result of voting in elitist pig-head fuckers and their ilk. Leaders of integrity. I use the word leaders incredibly loosely.

Oh but here's a cool trick, let's blame Europe!