Has the penny dropped (as fast as the Pound)- Brexit is a disaster

My stylus is playing up, please excuse the typos!!

Wiser

I'm with Fleurpepper. I hope Keir Starmer moves us more closer to Europe. Their is strength in unity.

Not an easy thing to achieve when you're in Oppoition 🤔

Mamie

Just out of interest are the workers from Spanish territories in North Africa or elsewhere?

It didn't matter, their working conditions were appalling.
They were treated as slaves.

Mamie

As British in France, Brexit has caused us consistent financial loss because of the impact of the decline of the pound on our pensions (we have the spreadsheets) and lots of minor irritations. What still makes me most angry is the impact on the choices available to our grandchildren in terms of their right to study and work in other European countries.
I would not, however, bother to start threads about it on Gransnet. It is quite clear from polling that younger generations of British are turning against Brexit and seeing it as a mistake, which was fuelled by vested interests and vainglorious and incompetent politicians.
The views of our generation for or against Brexit will cease to have any relevance.

I agree with you. Things that I miss following Brexit:

No young music groups touring in France as far as I can see.
No choirs or theatrical groups.
Several shops not selling abroad

Luckily I can still buy cheddar some times. Despite living in a country which is very proud of its cheeses, we don't have anything that equals a good Cheddar. There are several that are similar but not quite the same.

Remoaners/Rejoiners DO NOT like any facts that they have not made up. The UK SAVED 7 times 18 Billion by not being in the EU for the next Seven Years. WE DID NOT pay 200 Billion in the EU Covid Revoery Fund nor did WE pay 200 Billion for Covid Vaccines . WE ARE NOT in Recession as the Eurozone is and OUR food Inflation is way below the European Average and falling as theirs is rising.

You make some good points about leave voters Maggiemaybe. I voted remain, but found some aspects of the leave arguments quite compelling. In the end, I voted remain because I believed it would be better for the economy. Rabid remainers might argue that the economy is now trashed because of Brexit but it’s not as simple as that because of Covid and the Ukraine war. We don’t know how our economy might be performing if these things hadn’t happened but Brexit had happened. I’m certain we would still have inflation and increased energy prices, in or out of the EU.

Fleurpepper

MerylStreep

Freya5
I’ve always believed the eu will fall apart. This will come about through the collapse of the euro. This has been spoken about for many years ( since its inception)

www.reuters.com/plus/could-the-euro-collapse#

the only value which has fallen through the floor is Sterling.

Yes, it is lovely where I am currently, fancy that, and I have just returned from Italy- it was very lovely too.

When we moved here 1 £ was worth x 2.50 - and it is now just about over x 1 - a loss of about 60% (and 60% of our pensionable income too).

We did not move for it to be lovely, but to look after my very elderly parents, now both gone. Why not return to the UK then, some will ask. But I do think you know the answer! The country has changed beyond recognition and at our age, with our medical history, relying on the NHS is NOT a viable option.

My guess is the States. I can remember when £1 bought US$2.4 for many years. (no need to reply)

Seagull72

I agree with you Fp. It has limited my life choices in many ways. Hopefully, we will rejoin the EU one day. As for Health and Safety, along with the state of our beaches and rivers, this government can't be trusted to look after people's health and are trying to overturn current EU Health and Safety initiatives to save money. People who voted for the Brexit lies still can't admit the damage that has been done. They are either very wealthy or live in their own bubble Don't let the bullies silence you.

If you are tlaking about my post on the first page

I meant how Health and Safety was tighened up in the 80s, or some such time. Decades before Brexit.

My point being, and I will try and put it in different words for you, some things are done or not done. Sometimes, quite often actually, it cannot be measured properly what would have happened with certain things, if those things did not happen. Or did happen.

Same in our lives of course If we had gone down a different path, there might have been some better outcomes and some worse ones. Sometimes no one will ever know what might have happened.

If we had Remained, there would have been some better bits and some worse bits.
How can that possibly properly be measured? It can never be.

So no matter how many times someone wants some answers to whether things would have been better if we had Remained, there can never be all the definitive answers.
No matter how annoyed some Remainers remain about the outcome now.

Closer not more closer!

I'm with Fleurpepper. I hope Keir Starmer moves us more closer to Europe. Their is strength in unity.

TiggyW

I can’t see why unemployed Brits can’t pick fruit.🤔

If they live close to where the fruit needs to be picked; if they can afford to pay their mortgage or rent on the often low hourly rate, if they have childcare arrangements that are affordable should they have children - and if they have the physical stamina plus the ability to survive without pay if they need time off for whatever reason - they can. And maybe some do.

It's not a job that just anyone who's unemployed can do - and I know because I've done it when I was young and fit, working from 6am to 6pm doing damned hard work... so exhausted at the end of the day that I couldn't even ride my bike the 3 miles from field to home - home being where my mother lived, if I hadn't been staying with her rent-free, I couldn't even have afforded to do the job.

So actually, it's not a job that "the unemployed" can do - only some.

I agree JOSANN, I was in Germany a couple of weeks ago. My daughter has lived there for over 30yrs. They too are having high food prices along with fuel. Things are really not rosy for them either. Brexit wasn’t discussed at all. We’ve done all of that years ago! Like it or loathe it, there isn’t much point in any of us on here arguing about it. Government have never really listened to Joe Public. Maybe they’ve allowed us to believe they have, but apart from the vote, once whichever party gets in the power is all theirs.

sazz1

I'm very pleased we had Brexit and left.
We aren't pouring gallons of milk and butter away now that we couldn't sell or even give away to the poor
We aren't paying benefits for six kids in an Eastern European country while their dad works here on minimum wage
We aren't leaving fields empty or moving sheep from field to field to pay farmers not to grow crops
We can sell our own produce without limits
We can fish our own waters when we like
We aren't exploiting European workers fruit picking in terrible conditions on v low pay
We can have our own laws without them being overturned by the EU courts in favour of the criminals.
And that's just a few of the benefits of leaving

Good post, I agree with you

Just out of interest are the workers from Spanish territories in North Africa or elsewhere?

I am just pleased we are no longer controlled by another country and the sooner we tell the European Court of Human Rights where to go the better. I did not vote to join the then Common Market in 1974, I knew it would become an "expensive club".

All I will say on this subject is: we only actually left the EU at the end of 2020, a mere two and a half years ago. Give it time - extracting ourselves from a group we were part of for the best part of 50 years, with everything that entailed, and forging a bright future as a truly independent country, will not happen overnight.

MerylStreep

TiggyW

I can’t see why unemployed Brits can’t pick fruit.🤔

They can, they’re just not as good at it as Eastern Europeans.
They grew up doing this work.
Not all companies pay poor wages.
My step daughter is payroll manager at a Kent fruit farm.

I think many employers are responsible, pay fair wages and provide accommodation too.

It's odd, isn't it, perhaps the Spanish employ African workers perhaps because locals won't do the work and Australians employ a lot of very hardworking Asian workers because younger locals are reluctant to do the work.

Excuse typos!

Some Remainers seem to assume that those who voted to leave were just a bit thick and easily taken in by the lies undoubtedly spread by Boris and his ilk. I’d actually put the blame for the whole fiasco squarely on Cameron, with a huge dollop reserved for those who couldn’t be bothered to turn out, but that’s a post for another day. The Leave voters were perfectly entitled to their opinions.

Maggiemaybe
Yes, I've been ashamed to read some posts on here as I have friends who voted to leave and I know full well that they are well-educated people and thought it through very carefully.

What I'd like to know is do those who think those who voted Brexit are a bit thick think the same about the populations of those countries which refused to join the EU eg Iceland, Norway, Switzerland.

When Switzerland held a referendum on whether or not to join the EEA it was rejected by 50.3% of the voters and eventually an application for full EU membership was withdrawn.
Does this work well, does anyone know?
Or do the Swiss still argue endlessly about this?

Gordon Brown was allegedly reluctant to sign the Lisbon Treaty (Milibn signed it) and perhaps Cameron's big mistake was not to offer a third alternative on the voting slip; withdraw from full membership but retain other agreements.
Ireland held more than one referendum on the Lisbon Treaty until the accepted result was obtained.

TiggyW

I can’t see why unemployed Brits can’t pick fruit.🤔

They can, they’re just not as good at it as Eastern Europeans.
They grew up doing this work.
Not all companies pay poor wages.
My step daughter is payroll manager at a Kent fruit farm.

It's actually quite specialised, watch fruit pickers. and the speed they work at. It's seasonal, and people need somewhere to live, and it offers no childcare backups. If you injure yourself, you won't get paid, zero hours contract.

This is not a "why not" statement rather pointing out why its not simple.

I don’t wish to teach my grandmother how to suck eggs but I’m sure there are lots of posters on here who don’t know of this arrangement that they have with Libya.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/20/migrants-detained-in-libya-for-profit-leaked-eu-report-reveals

I can’t see why unemployed Brits can’t pick fruit.🤔

We all voted for our own reasons, some perhaps altruistic, but most in our own interests. Of course we did.

I voted to remain, but like most people, I accepted the outcome. That’s democracy, like it or not. Yes, I’m sad that my DGC won’t have the benefits of free movement. On the other hand, I never was comfortable with our reliance on cheap labour from poorer countries - we should be better than that, and I hope that one day we will be.

Some Remainers seem to assume that those who voted to leave were just a bit thick and easily taken in by the lies undoubtedly spread by Boris and his ilk. I’d actually put the blame for the whole fiasco squarely on Cameron, with a huge dollop reserved for those who couldn’t be bothered to turn out, but that’s a post for another day. The Leave voters were perfectly entitled to their opinions.

Why did people vote the way they did? In my case I certainly didn’t believe (and still don’t believe) that everything in the EU garden was rosy. Lots of aspects worried me. Here’s a small example. I had an interview at the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg back in the 70s, for a very junior position as an interpreter. They interviewed 20 people over 2 days for one post, all flown out to Luxembourg. 10 who flew out from the UK on day 1, the other 10 of us travelled there from various countries that we were working in at the time. We were all put up for the night in a first class hotel, and told we would be reimbursed for first class travel. I wasn’t the only one to choose to fly economy - even then some of us were aware of what a waste of public funds this would be. We were laughed at and told that the EU had plenty of money. If this was the gravy train in action at the very bottom rung, what was it like at the top?

What swung my vote was that I knew what a nightmare Brexit would be for business and trade, particularly with reference to transport, having worked in the shipping industry here and in Germany - I still don’t feel this issue was properly explained during the run up to the vote.

But I had sympathy with the point of view prevalent in the Brexit supporters in the very deprived area where I worked. They’d had an influx of EU workers undercutting them in their already poorly paid jobs, and there was no sign of it easing off. Apart from that, their local schools’ intakes went from 90% South Asian ethnic origin to over 50% Central European Roma in the course of a couple of years. Many of the new arrivals spoke no English, some of them coming into the school at 7 or 8 years old having had no previous formal education, and it was very disruptive.

These voters really didn’t care about Boris’s bus. Nor did they worry too much about the middle classes having to rethink their holiday homes, maybe having to queue for a bit longer at the airports or change their gap year itineraries, and why would they? They were scared about losing their livelihoods, and about their children’s basic education and future life chances. To be clear, these children would have been very unlikely to ever benefit from the ERASMUS scheme. They probably won’t benefit from many “life choices”.

SazzI
What a bloody awful thing to admit to that you believe in low pay you’ve certainly shown your colours 😡