By then they will almost certainly own property themselves given the age of first property ownership is 39 and be starting to look to retirement
HYUFD I am telling you as a young person, it's not going to happen.
I own a flat, I hate the Tories for what they have done to us. You are finished.
Not many young people own a flat though
Yes because of our failure of economic policy.
Housing crash now, fuck the elderly.
If there is a housing crash the young will be rogered big time, .
Exactly! The elderly with paid off mortgages will simply have less to pass on to their younger heirs. The young who have mortgages will be totally screwed!
Most people with mortgages will be screwed - including many landlords.
Most young people haven't got mortgages. Inheriting half as much isn't any kind of a problem if they were going to buy a house with it and houses have halved in value.
I'm with Horse. Bring on the housing market crash. (I don't share his attitude towards the elderly, though.)
Certainly by 35-44 on that chart they will have bought with a mortgage
In totally unrelated news, I've been looking at the electricity generation graphs for January. I know there's three hours still to go but even after the last ten days I would have thought it's looking good for record wind power. Does anyone know where I can find the stats on this? I'd be interested to see them.
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Sorry but it has definitely got worse since Brexit. And while eg Americans need a passport to travel to Europe, they can travel unfettered around their own continent, whereas we need to stand in line and get our passport stamped to visit a country 22 miles away. So it's not really a comparable situation.
...and we have to clear out after 90 days. Why did we do this to ourselves?
That’s possibly the most annoying thing of all. I was planning on retiring in France.
Can you do so by taking French citizenship?
Not easily without working there first. Which might be an option. France doesn’t do the old golden ticket type arrangements like some other countries.
Anyway after the disappointment of Brexit decided to double down on the opportunities afforded here in Blighty and planted a vineyard in Kent.
I’ve seen you posting about vineyards before and wondered where in the U.K. you were doing it. How long till first harvest? (If not already happened.)
I see others have chewed over the latest R&W Blue Wall polling. Again, it's a misnomer to assume the Blue Wall is simply or wholly Conservative vs LD. A number of seats in said wall are actually Con-Lab marginals.
It's also worth stating, contrary to the "wisdom" imparted by others, the Conservatives are doing worse in the Blue Wall than the Red Wall. The England swing in their UK poll was 18% and in the Blue Wall it's nearer 20% whereas in the Red Wall the swing is 17.5%.
This means the Conservatives are doing worse in their core seats (which they can afford to) than in their marginals but only marginally (sorry). Either way, we're down at between 240 and 280 on the list of Conservative seats which suggests (currently) a surviving Conservative Party of 80-120 seats.
That wouldn't be an extinction event (six seats didn't end the Liberals) but it would be the worst result for the Conservatives since 1997 and a feature of FPTP is a bad result for the Conservatives can be worse than a bad result for Labour.
...six seats didn't end the Liberals...
Sorry Stodge but 40 seats ended the Liberals in 1924. The End as a governing party.
Now, if the Tories dropped to 40 seats and subsequently carried on as an electoral irrelevance that's fine by me.
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
Speaking for myself, my grandmother was a refugee from Vienna and my grandparents lived in Vienna until I was eleven, and we often visited them in Austria. Much more often then we ever visited Scotland, Wales or Ireland.
That said, although I'm disappointed by Britain leaving the EU, I'm finding that this sense of my identity is not dependent on British membership of EU institutions. That might be different for someone who doesn't have such familial connections, and I'm on track for two EU passports by the middle of the decade too, which somewhat takes the edge off.
I had a Dutch/Belgian grandmother. And I could not give a f**k. Maybe I'm reading too much into TimS's post, but to toy with the idea of inventing some continental ancestors just reiterates to me that this could be a bit of an inferiority thing?
Like I said, this is a perfect dress rehearsal for PB discussions post Scottish Indy if ever a unionist dare speak.
Anyway I am now settling down to dinner in what is almost certainly not the 14th best restaurant in Europe or even in the freezing cold Danish answer to the Greenwich peninsula that is Nordhavn.
No it isn't. My emotions if a border were to be erected between England and Scotland wouldn't be anything like yours because I wouldn't be sobbing into my hanky about being 'made a foreigner'. My sense of who I am is a lot stronger than that.
You’re a Scottish unionist?
I am English, living in Scotland. I love my adopted country and feel more British than English, but it wouldn't make me feel inadequate to join second class queue and get my passport stamped on either side. My queue IS the good queue, because I'm in it. It's as simple as that.
By then they will almost certainly own property themselves given the age of first property ownership is 39 and be starting to look to retirement
HYUFD I am telling you as a young person, it's not going to happen.
I own a flat, I hate the Tories for what they have done to us. You are finished.
Not many young people own a flat though
Yes because of our failure of economic policy.
Housing crash now, fuck the elderly.
If there is a housing crash the young will be rogered big time, .
Exactly! The elderly with paid off mortgages will simply have less to pass on to their younger heirs. The young who have mortgages will be totally screwed!
Most people with mortgages will be screwed - including many landlords.
Most young people haven't got mortgages. Inheriting half as much isn't any kind of a problem if they were going to buy a house with it and houses have halved in value.
I'm with Horse. Bring on the housing market crash. (I don't share his attitude towards the elderly, though.)
I see others have chewed over the latest R&W Blue Wall polling. Again, it's a misnomer to assume the Blue Wall is simply or wholly Conservative vs LD. A number of seats in said wall are actually Con-Lab marginals.
It's also worth stating, contrary to the "wisdom" imparted by others, the Conservatives are doing worse in the Blue Wall than the Red Wall. The England swing in their UK poll was 18% and in the Blue Wall it's nearer 20% whereas in the Red Wall the swing is 17.5%.
This means the Conservatives are doing worse in their core seats (which they can afford to) than in their marginals but only marginally (sorry). Either way, we're down at between 240 and 280 on the list of Conservative seats which suggests (currently) a surviving Conservative Party of 80-120 seats.
That wouldn't be an extinction event (six seats didn't end the Liberals) but it would be the worst result for the Conservatives since 1997 and a feature of FPTP is a bad result for the Conservatives can be worse than a bad result for Labour.
Labour's blue wall lead is only 10%, their red wall lead is 26%
In totally unrelated news, I've been looking at the electricity generation graphs for January. I know there's three hours still to go but even after the last ten days I would have thought it's looking good for record wind power. Does anyone know where I can find the stats on this? I'd be interested to see them.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
The trains are much better in the EU.
Well, the high speed ones, anyway. Although even most of their local trains seem more reliable than ours.
Really? As we only have one high speed line that surprises me slightly.
You might have said they have more of them, which is true.
One of the really good things about the TGV is you can't get a ticket without reserving a seat. So no standing around in crowded corridors as you get on some of the British Intercities. For all my opposition to HS2 I do hope this is one French initiative they adopt.
In totally unrelated news, I've been looking at the electricity generation graphs for January. I know there's three hours still to go but even after the last ten days I would have thought it's looking good for record wind power. Does anyone know where I can find the stats on this? I'd be interested to see them.
By then they will almost certainly own property themselves given the age of first property ownership is 39 and be starting to look to retirement
HYUFD I am telling you as a young person, it's not going to happen.
I own a flat, I hate the Tories for what they have done to us. You are finished.
Not many young people own a flat though
Yes because of our failure of economic policy.
Housing crash now, fuck the elderly.
If there is a housing crash the young will be rogered big time, .
Exactly! The elderly with paid off mortgages will simply have less to pass on to their younger heirs. The young who have mortgages will be totally screwed!
Most people with mortgages will be screwed - including many landlords.
Most young people haven't got mortgages. Inheriting half as much isn't any kind of a problem if they were going to buy a house with it and houses have halved in value.
I'm with Horse. Bring on the housing market crash. (I don't share his attitude towards the elderly, though.)
Those figures for ages 55-64 are remarkably low?
As most of them have already bought with a mortgage by that age
Personally, I’m saddened at how badly Brexit had gone. In some ways, it has gone worse than I imagined.
I didn’t fully predict the debauch of politics and public institutions (today’s report from Transparency International another sign of this). I actually also thought that any resultant deal would be slightly closer to the status quo ante; for example I thought we’d end up with something closer to a Swiss deal. Northern Ireland is worse than I thought, Scotland (marginally) better.
I’m astonished that nobody senior on the Brexit side has been able to construct a coherent vision and path for it.
Not May, not Johnson, not Cummings, not Rishi. Not Farage, Tice, not Hannan or Carswell. Not Rees-Mogg, Davis, or Raab. Not Sunak.
I can see *potential* opportunities from Brexit, or rather, maybe, opportunities that a Brexit would *need* to exploit in order to be successful.
It gives me no satisfaction to see the UK in such a state.
Gove is the only one who's capable of that vision, IMHO. He demonstrated at DEFRA and has done so since whenever he's had the chance.
I often wonder if things had been different had he won the 2016 leadership contest.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
Trans, you say?
Seriously, though. There is a new Austrian sleeper from Munich all the way to La Spezzia for the Cinque Terre. My next trip, I think.
Annoying train story from today. I need to be in Edinburgh for a meeting next week. Return train ticket just under £300, or a bit more on the Caledonian sleeper. Flights plus 1 night hotel £200. So I have to take the plane. The sleeper would have saved time and avoided a horrendous early morning, and saved on emissions.
I’ve been looking into trains to Morocco from London. It’s surprisingly easy: Paris on Eurostar, TGV to Madrid, train to Algeciras or Tarifa, ferry, then train via Casablanca to most cities in Morocco. Around 2 and a half days.
I see others have chewed over the latest R&W Blue Wall polling. Again, it's a misnomer to assume the Blue Wall is simply or wholly Conservative vs LD. A number of seats in said wall are actually Con-Lab marginals.
It's also worth stating, contrary to the "wisdom" imparted by others, the Conservatives are doing worse in the Blue Wall than the Red Wall. The England swing in their UK poll was 18% and in the Blue Wall it's nearer 20% whereas in the Red Wall the swing is 17.5%.
This means the Conservatives are doing worse in their core seats (which they can afford to) than in their marginals but only marginally (sorry). Either way, we're down at between 240 and 280 on the list of Conservative seats which suggests (currently) a surviving Conservative Party of 80-120 seats.
That wouldn't be an extinction event (six seats didn't end the Liberals) but it would be the worst result for the Conservatives since 1997 and a feature of FPTP is a bad result for the Conservatives can be worse than a bad result for Labour.
...six seats didn't end the Liberals...
Sorry Stodge but 40 seats ended the Liberals in 1924. The End as a governing party.
Now, if the Tories dropped to 40 seats and subsequently carried on as an electoral irrelevance that's fine by me.
*PS The LDs are not the Liberal Party.
Only as Labour overtook them. Labour fell to 52 seats in 1931 but were back in government by 1945
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
The progress to 'Europe is my country' was of course vehemently denied by remainers generally, even though FoM, Euro, ECB, Potemkin parliament and 'ever closer union' made it obvious that TimS was correct.
Brexiteers were derided for thinking such thoughts. Despite all the ghastly chaos it remains by miles the most significant issue in the debate and why voting Brexit was, sadly, the less bad of two bad options.
It remains obvious that most UK people, given a choice, want a single market in goods and services and a common travel area but are absolutely opposed to political union.
And of course with the recent Franco-German proposals for making tax and Foreign/Security policy QMV, they are continuing that project to this day.
Snore.
Funny how you are such a Europhile but don't actually care about what they are planning or doing. I suppose that is par for the course with you. Who cares how you are governed as long as you get your bread and circuses (or croissants and Eurovision)
If our own democracy were any sort of shining example of anything, then just perhaps you might have a little patch of solid ground on which to attempt an argument.
That wasn't the point. Your response to comments about British democratic systems is not to pretend you don't care just because you find the issue difficult.
And as I have said many times before, for me Brexit is just the first vital step along the road to far more fundamental reform of our democracy.
I see others have chewed over the latest R&W Blue Wall polling. Again, it's a misnomer to assume the Blue Wall is simply or wholly Conservative vs LD. A number of seats in said wall are actually Con-Lab marginals.
It's also worth stating, contrary to the "wisdom" imparted by others, the Conservatives are doing worse in the Blue Wall than the Red Wall. The England swing in their UK poll was 18% and in the Blue Wall it's nearer 20% whereas in the Red Wall the swing is 17.5%.
This means the Conservatives are doing worse in their core seats (which they can afford to) than in their marginals but only marginally (sorry). Either way, we're down at between 240 and 280 on the list of Conservative seats which suggests (currently) a surviving Conservative Party of 80-120 seats.
That wouldn't be an extinction event (six seats didn't end the Liberals) but it would be the worst result for the Conservatives since 1997 and a feature of FPTP is a bad result for the Conservatives can be worse than a bad result for Labour.
...six seats didn't end the Liberals...
Sorry Stodge but 40 seats ended the Liberals in 1924. The End as a governing party.
Now, if the Tories dropped to 40 seats and subsequently carried on as an electoral irrelevance that's fine by me.
*PS The LDs are not the Liberal Party.
Only as Labour overtook them. Labour fell to 52 seats in 1931 but were back in government by 1945
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
I was born with dual citizenship - just the pure luck of the birth lottery. I was raised in a time when joining the EEC (as the EU-to-be was back then) was viewed as a good thing. As I grew up the EU was just something that was there and I appreciated the ease of travel and the ease at which I could do work for companies in Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid.
Then Brexit happened and to my own surprise, I felt the loss far more keenly than I expected. But I was lucky enough to have that other passport.
My UK one expires this year. I may not bother renewing it.
This must be a different Beverley to the "BETTER OFF OUT!" one who used to inhabit this board.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
The trains are much better in the EU.
Well, the high speed ones, anyway. Although even most of their local trains seem more reliable than ours.
Really? As we only have one high speed line that surprises me slightly.
You might have said they have more of them, which is true.
One of the really good things about the TGV is you can't get a ticket without reserving a seat. So no standing around in crowded corridors as you get on some of the British Intercities. For all my opposition to HS2 I do hope this is one French initiative they adopt.
Same on the Eurocity, but not the Freccias or the ICE. Although once you’ve done along ICE journey and had to keep changing seat as your previously unreserved one gets booked by a boarding passenger just as the train pulls into a station, flashing up on the little electronic LED panel above your head, you’ll reserve the next time…
Personally, I’m saddened at how badly Brexit had gone. In some ways, it has gone worse than I imagined.
I didn’t fully predict the debauch of politics and public institutions (today’s report from Transparency International another sign of this). I actually also thought that any resultant deal would be slightly closer to the status quo ante; for example I thought we’d end up with something closer to a Swiss deal. Northern Ireland is worse than I thought, Scotland (marginally) better.
I’m astonished that nobody senior on the Brexit side has been able to construct a coherent vision and path for it.
Not May, not Johnson, not Cummings, not Rishi. Not Farage, Tice, not Hannan or Carswell. Not Rees-Mogg, Davis, or Raab. Not Sunak.
I can see *potential* opportunities from Brexit, or rather, maybe, opportunities that a Brexit would *need* to exploit in order to be successful.
It gives me no satisfaction to see the UK in such a state.
Gove is the only one who's capable of that vision, IMHO. He demonstrated at DEFRA and has done so since whenever he's had the chance.
I often wonder if things had been different had he won the 2016 leadership contest.
How is it that you feel Gove established a good post-Brexit Defra policy (if you don't mind summarising, or point me to an article)?
By then they will almost certainly own property themselves given the age of first property ownership is 39 and be starting to look to retirement
HYUFD I am telling you as a young person, it's not going to happen.
I own a flat, I hate the Tories for what they have done to us. You are finished.
Not many young people own a flat though
Yes because of our failure of economic policy.
Housing crash now, fuck the elderly.
If there is a housing crash the young will be rogered big time, .
Exactly! The elderly with paid off mortgages will simply have less to pass on to their younger heirs. The young who have mortgages will be totally screwed!
Most people with mortgages will be screwed - including many landlords.
Most young people haven't got mortgages. Inheriting half as much isn't any kind of a problem if they were going to buy a house with it and houses have halved in value.
I'm with Horse. Bring on the housing market crash. (I don't share his attitude towards the elderly, though.)
Those figures for ages 55-64 are remarkably low?
As most of them have already bought with a mortgage by that age
Only 37% together with those owning outright? Seems oddly low to me
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
Speaking for myself, my grandmother was a refugee from Vienna and my grandparents lived in Vienna until I was eleven, and we often visited them in Austria. Much more often then we ever visited Scotland, Wales or Ireland.
That said, although I'm disappointed by Britain leaving the EU, I'm finding that this sense of my identity is not dependent on British membership of EU institutions. That might be different for someone who doesn't have such familial connections, and I'm on track for two EU passports by the middle of the decade too, which somewhat takes the edge off.
I had a Dutch/Belgian grandmother. And I could not give a f**k. Maybe I'm reading too much into TimS's post, but to toy with the idea of inventing some continental ancestors just reiterates to me that this could be a bit of an inferiority thing?
Not really. It seemed a very natural extension to the way Britain is organised, where we're one United Kingdom, and yet we still have separate national football teams, a Scottish legal system, etc.
This has always struck me as a sign of confidence, that we are comfortable with holding multiple identities simultaneously, and so to have an additional European identity is a simple natural progression.
It's one of the things that I have always understood least about Eurosceptics and Leavers, because they seemed to regard being part of a European Union as a threat to their British identity, while not seeing being part of a United Kingdom to be a threat to their English/Cornish/Yorkshire/Welsh/Scottish identity (unless they were similarly afflicted Welsh or Scottish nationalists I suppose). Perhaps you could think of that as a lack of confidence in British identity, or a sense of inferiority of not being able to retain that identity as part of a larger whole.
I've never got this argument.
Britons share strong linguistic, historical, geographic, cultural and institutional similarities that allow them to unite under one nationality.
I don't feel anything like the same affinities or ties with continental European countries and I think the equivalence is a false one.
The first is not true of Wales - or at least, not until within living memory - even if it is true of England, Lowland Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Well, it is because most Welsh speak English - not Welsh.
They may learn a bit in school, and all the roadsigns are now bilingual, but Welsh as a first primary language is very much in the minority.
Any praise for Gove has first to go through the examinations and scrutiny of ydoethur, PB's biggest Gove arch-critic, for seemingly good reasons of his stuff-ups at education.
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
Speaking for myself, my grandmother was a refugee from Vienna and my grandparents lived in Vienna until I was eleven, and we often visited them in Austria. Much more often then we ever visited Scotland, Wales or Ireland.
That said, although I'm disappointed by Britain leaving the EU, I'm finding that this sense of my identity is not dependent on British membership of EU institutions. That might be different for someone who doesn't have such familial connections, and I'm on track for two EU passports by the middle of the decade too, which somewhat takes the edge off.
I had a Dutch/Belgian grandmother. And I could not give a f**k. Maybe I'm reading too much into TimS's post, but to toy with the idea of inventing some continental ancestors just reiterates to me that this could be a bit of an inferiority thing?
Not really. It seemed a very natural extension to the way Britain is organised, where we're one United Kingdom, and yet we still have separate national football teams, a Scottish legal system, etc.
This has always struck me as a sign of confidence, that we are comfortable with holding multiple identities simultaneously, and so to have an additional European identity is a simple natural progression.
It's one of the things that I have always understood least about Eurosceptics and Leavers, because they seemed to regard being part of a European Union as a threat to their British identity, while not seeing being part of a United Kingdom to be a threat to their English/Cornish/Yorkshire/Welsh/Scottish identity (unless they were similarly afflicted Welsh or Scottish nationalists I suppose). Perhaps you could think of that as a lack of confidence in British identity, or a sense of inferiority of not being able to retain that identity as part of a larger whole.
I've never got this argument.
Britons share strong linguistic, historical, geographic, cultural and institutional similarities that allow them to unite under one nationality.
I don't feel anything like the same affinities or ties with continental European countries and I think the equivalence is a false one.
The first is not true of Wales - or at least, not until within living memory - even if it is true of England, Lowland Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Well, it is because most Welsh speak English - not Welsh.
They may learn a bit in school, and all the roadsigns are now bilingual, but Welsh as a first primary language is very much in the minority.
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
Speaking for myself, my grandmother was a refugee from Vienna and my grandparents lived in Vienna until I was eleven, and we often visited them in Austria. Much more often then we ever visited Scotland, Wales or Ireland.
That said, although I'm disappointed by Britain leaving the EU, I'm finding that this sense of my identity is not dependent on British membership of EU institutions. That might be different for someone who doesn't have such familial connections, and I'm on track for two EU passports by the middle of the decade too, which somewhat takes the edge off.
I had a Dutch/Belgian grandmother. And I could not give a f**k. Maybe I'm reading too much into TimS's post, but to toy with the idea of inventing some continental ancestors just reiterates to me that this could be a bit of an inferiority thing?
Like I said, this is a perfect dress rehearsal for PB discussions post Scottish Indy if ever a unionist dare speak.
Anyway I am now settling down to dinner in what is almost certainly not the 14th best restaurant in Europe or even in the freezing cold Danish answer to the Greenwich peninsula that is Nordhavn.
No it isn't. My emotions if a border were to be erected between England and Scotland wouldn't be anything like yours because I wouldn't be sobbing into my hanky about being 'made a foreigner'. My sense of who I am is a lot stronger than that.
You’re a Scottish unionist?
I am English, living in Scotland. I love my adopted country and feel more British than English, but it wouldn't make me feel inadequate to join second class queue and get my passport stamped on either side. My queue IS the good queue, because I'm in it. It's as simple as that.
Let’s hope for everyone’s sake we don’t have passport control on the England-Scotland border after independence.
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
The progress to 'Europe is my country' was of course vehemently denied by remainers generally, even though FoM, Euro, ECB, Potemkin parliament and 'ever closer union' made it obvious that TimS was correct.
Brexiteers were derided for thinking such thoughts. Despite all the ghastly chaos it remains by miles the most significant issue in the debate and why voting Brexit was, sadly, the less bad of two bad options.
It remains obvious that most UK people, given a choice, want a single market in goods and services and a common travel area but are absolutely opposed to political union.
And of course with the recent Franco-German proposals for making tax and Foreign/Security policy QMV, they are continuing that project to this day.
Snore.
Funny how you are such a Europhile but don't actually care about what they are planning or doing. I suppose that is par for the course with you. Who cares how you are governed as long as you get your bread and circuses (or croissants and Eurovision)
If our own democracy were any sort of shining example of anything, then just perhaps you might have a little patch of solid ground on which to attempt an argument.
That wasn't the point. Your response to comments about British democratic systems is not to pretend you don't care just because you find the issue difficult.
And as I have said many times before, for me Brexit is just the first vital step along the road to far more fundamental reform of our democracy.
Knocking your living room wall down might be the first vital step along the road to a fundamental reshaping of your house, but I wouldn’t advise doing it until you have a credible workable plan that both the council and your housemates have agreed to.
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
Speaking for myself, my grandmother was a refugee from Vienna and my grandparents lived in Vienna until I was eleven, and we often visited them in Austria. Much more often then we ever visited Scotland, Wales or Ireland.
That said, although I'm disappointed by Britain leaving the EU, I'm finding that this sense of my identity is not dependent on British membership of EU institutions. That might be different for someone who doesn't have such familial connections, and I'm on track for two EU passports by the middle of the decade too, which somewhat takes the edge off.
I had a Dutch/Belgian grandmother. And I could not give a f**k. Maybe I'm reading too much into TimS's post, but to toy with the idea of inventing some continental ancestors just reiterates to me that this could be a bit of an inferiority thing?
Not really. It seemed a very natural extension to the way Britain is organised, where we're one United Kingdom, and yet we still have separate national football teams, a Scottish legal system, etc.
This has always struck me as a sign of confidence, that we are comfortable with holding multiple identities simultaneously, and so to have an additional European identity is a simple natural progression.
It's one of the things that I have always understood least about Eurosceptics and Leavers, because they seemed to regard being part of a European Union as a threat to their British identity, while not seeing being part of a United Kingdom to be a threat to their English/Cornish/Yorkshire/Welsh/Scottish identity (unless they were similarly afflicted Welsh or Scottish nationalists I suppose). Perhaps you could think of that as a lack of confidence in British identity, or a sense of inferiority of not being able to retain that identity as part of a larger whole.
I've never got this argument.
Britons share strong linguistic, historical, geographic, cultural and institutional similarities that allow them to unite under one nationality.
I don't feel anything like the same affinities or ties with continental European countries and I think the equivalence is a false one.
The first is not true of Wales - or at least, not until within living memory - even if it is true of England, Lowland Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Well, it is because most Welsh speak English - not Welsh.
They may learn a bit in school, and all the roadsigns are now bilingual, but Welsh as a first primary language is very much in the minority.
It is now. It wasn't until the 1940s.
In an independent Wales Monmouthshire will be the Donbas and Pembrokeshire the Crimea.
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
Speaking for myself, my grandmother was a refugee from Vienna and my grandparents lived in Vienna until I was eleven, and we often visited them in Austria. Much more often then we ever visited Scotland, Wales or Ireland.
That said, although I'm disappointed by Britain leaving the EU, I'm finding that this sense of my identity is not dependent on British membership of EU institutions. That might be different for someone who doesn't have such familial connections, and I'm on track for two EU passports by the middle of the decade too, which somewhat takes the edge off.
I had a Dutch/Belgian grandmother. And I could not give a f**k. Maybe I'm reading too much into TimS's post, but to toy with the idea of inventing some continental ancestors just reiterates to me that this could be a bit of an inferiority thing?
Not really. It seemed a very natural extension to the way Britain is organised, where we're one United Kingdom, and yet we still have separate national football teams, a Scottish legal system, etc.
This has always struck me as a sign of confidence, that we are comfortable with holding multiple identities simultaneously, and so to have an additional European identity is a simple natural progression.
It's one of the things that I have always understood least about Eurosceptics and Leavers, because they seemed to regard being part of a European Union as a threat to their British identity, while not seeing being part of a United Kingdom to be a threat to their English/Cornish/Yorkshire/Welsh/Scottish identity (unless they were similarly afflicted Welsh or Scottish nationalists I suppose). Perhaps you could think of that as a lack of confidence in British identity, or a sense of inferiority of not being able to retain that identity as part of a larger whole.
I've never got this argument.
Britons share strong linguistic, historical, geographic, cultural and institutional similarities that allow them to unite under one nationality.
I don't feel anything like the same affinities or ties with continental European countries and I think the equivalence is a false one.
Linguistic is the huge one here, of course. Without a common language, a demos is very difficult if not impossible to create. And no demos, no democracy, naturally.
Also, insofar as there were historical, geographic and cultural - and maybe institutional - similarities with the rest of the EU, these were diluted not strengthened by eastwards expansion.
Bit more than that though, perhaps?
Otherwise Australia, Canada and NZ and the UK wouldn't be different countries.
Actually, come to think of it, I feel closer affinities with all of those compared to European countries.
Particularly France - always struck by how different that feels when you cross the channel and enter the pas de calais. And it's only 20 miles away.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
Trans, you say?
Seriously, though. There is a new Austrian sleeper from Munich all the way to La Spezzia for the Cinque Terre. My next trip, I think.
Annoying train story from today. I need to be in Edinburgh for a meeting next week. Return train ticket just under £300, or a bit more on the Caledonian sleeper. Flights plus 1 night hotel £200. So I have to take the plane. The sleeper would have saved time and avoided a horrendous early morning, and saved on emissions.
I’ve been looking into trains to Morocco from London. It’s surprisingly easy: Paris on Eurostar, TGV to Madrid, train to Algeciras or Tarifa, ferry, then train via Casablanca to most cities in Morocco. Around 2 and a half days.
Sounds like a fun trip too. Pack the Portillo trousers…
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
Speaking for myself, my grandmother was a refugee from Vienna and my grandparents lived in Vienna until I was eleven, and we often visited them in Austria. Much more often then we ever visited Scotland, Wales or Ireland.
That said, although I'm disappointed by Britain leaving the EU, I'm finding that this sense of my identity is not dependent on British membership of EU institutions. That might be different for someone who doesn't have such familial connections, and I'm on track for two EU passports by the middle of the decade too, which somewhat takes the edge off.
I had a Dutch/Belgian grandmother. And I could not give a f**k. Maybe I'm reading too much into TimS's post, but to toy with the idea of inventing some continental ancestors just reiterates to me that this could be a bit of an inferiority thing?
Not really. It seemed a very natural extension to the way Britain is organised, where we're one United Kingdom, and yet we still have separate national football teams, a Scottish legal system, etc.
This has always struck me as a sign of confidence, that we are comfortable with holding multiple identities simultaneously, and so to have an additional European identity is a simple natural progression.
It's one of the things that I have always understood least about Eurosceptics and Leavers, because they seemed to regard being part of a European Union as a threat to their British identity, while not seeing being part of a United Kingdom to be a threat to their English/Cornish/Yorkshire/Welsh/Scottish identity (unless they were similarly afflicted Welsh or Scottish nationalists I suppose). Perhaps you could think of that as a lack of confidence in British identity, or a sense of inferiority of not being able to retain that identity as part of a larger whole.
I've never got this argument.
Britons share strong linguistic, historical, geographic, cultural and institutional similarities that allow them to unite under one nationality.
I don't feel anything like the same affinities or ties with continental European countries and I think the equivalence is a false one.
The first is not true of Wales - or at least, not until within living memory - even if it is true of England, Lowland Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Well, it is because most Welsh speak English - not Welsh.
They may learn a bit in school, and all the roadsigns are now bilingual, but Welsh as a first primary language is very much in the minority.
It is now. It wasn't until the 1940s.
In an independent Wales Monmouthshire will be the Donbas and Pembrokeshire the Crimea.
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
Speaking for myself, my grandmother was a refugee from Vienna and my grandparents lived in Vienna until I was eleven, and we often visited them in Austria. Much more often then we ever visited Scotland, Wales or Ireland.
That said, although I'm disappointed by Britain leaving the EU, I'm finding that this sense of my identity is not dependent on British membership of EU institutions. That might be different for someone who doesn't have such familial connections, and I'm on track for two EU passports by the middle of the decade too, which somewhat takes the edge off.
I had a Dutch/Belgian grandmother. And I could not give a f**k. Maybe I'm reading too much into TimS's post, but to toy with the idea of inventing some continental ancestors just reiterates to me that this could be a bit of an inferiority thing?
Not really. It seemed a very natural extension to the way Britain is organised, where we're one United Kingdom, and yet we still have separate national football teams, a Scottish legal system, etc.
This has always struck me as a sign of confidence, that we are comfortable with holding multiple identities simultaneously, and so to have an additional European identity is a simple natural progression.
It's one of the things that I have always understood least about Eurosceptics and Leavers, because they seemed to regard being part of a European Union as a threat to their British identity, while not seeing being part of a United Kingdom to be a threat to their English/Cornish/Yorkshire/Welsh/Scottish identity (unless they were similarly afflicted Welsh or Scottish nationalists I suppose). Perhaps you could think of that as a lack of confidence in British identity, or a sense of inferiority of not being able to retain that identity as part of a larger whole.
I've never got this argument.
Britons share strong linguistic, historical, geographic, cultural and institutional similarities that allow them to unite under one nationality.
I don't feel anything like the same affinities or ties with continental European countries and I think the equivalence is a false one.
The first is not true of Wales - or at least, not until within living memory - even if it is true of England, Lowland Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Well, it is because most Welsh speak English - not Welsh.
They may learn a bit in school, and all the roadsigns are now bilingual, but Welsh as a first primary language is very much in the minority.
Wales will never stop feeling that it's the centre of a different Britain, I think, understandably, when you're closest linguistically to the original inhabitants, and yet mocked in England for the number of sheep.
It also helps to make the Welsh Brexit vote somehow even sillier and sadder, to me, as it's one of the regions that's done even worse since Brexit, exactly as predicted.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
No trains please.
I could mention how, despite not planting any spring bulbs last autumn (as I was travelling) lots of the bulbs - including tulips planted the previous year - are now coming up, which is very pleasing. I shall post pictures when they flower.
Also a definite hint of spring in the air.
Plus I have 93 houseplants. Have I mentioned my passion for houseplants before? No. Well, now you know. Every home should have some. I am particularly delighted by the strelitzias which are flourishing in a corner of the living room. My jungle corner where I sit and stare at the sea and sky.
By then they will almost certainly own property themselves given the age of first property ownership is 39 and be starting to look to retirement
HYUFD I am telling you as a young person, it's not going to happen.
I own a flat, I hate the Tories for what they have done to us. You are finished.
Not many young people own a flat though
Yes because of our failure of economic policy.
Housing crash now, fuck the elderly.
If there is a housing crash the young will be rogered big time, .
Exactly! The elderly with paid off mortgages will simply have less to pass on to their younger heirs. The young who have mortgages will be totally screwed!
Most people with mortgages will be screwed - including many landlords.
Most young people haven't got mortgages. Inheriting half as much isn't any kind of a problem if they were going to buy a house with it and houses have halved in value.
I'm with Horse. Bring on the housing market crash. (I don't share his attitude towards the elderly, though.)
Certainly by 35-44 on that chart they will have bought with a mortgage
70.7% of people in the 35-44 age group haven't got mortgages. In the large majority of cases, that's because their names aren't on the title deeds at all, because they rent. I'm not trying to be pedantic. It's incorrect to suggest that the typical young person or person under 35 or under 45 etc. etc. has a mortgage.
I see others have chewed over the latest R&W Blue Wall polling. Again, it's a misnomer to assume the Blue Wall is simply or wholly Conservative vs LD. A number of seats in said wall are actually Con-Lab marginals.
It's also worth stating, contrary to the "wisdom" imparted by others, the Conservatives are doing worse in the Blue Wall than the Red Wall. The England swing in their UK poll was 18% and in the Blue Wall it's nearer 20% whereas in the Red Wall the swing is 17.5%.
This means the Conservatives are doing worse in their core seats (which they can afford to) than in their marginals but only marginally (sorry). Either way, we're down at between 240 and 280 on the list of Conservative seats which suggests (currently) a surviving Conservative Party of 80-120 seats.
That wouldn't be an extinction event (six seats didn't end the Liberals) but it would be the worst result for the Conservatives since 1997 and a feature of FPTP is a bad result for the Conservatives can be worse than a bad result for Labour.
...six seats didn't end the Liberals...
Sorry Stodge but 40 seats ended the Liberals in 1924. The End as a governing party.
Now, if the Tories dropped to 40 seats and subsequently carried on as an electoral irrelevance that's fine by me.
*PS The LDs are not the Liberal Party.
Only as Labour overtook them. Labour fell to 52 seats in 1931 but were back in government by 1945
Well yes. If one of the main parties falls to 40 seats someone else is likely to overtake them.
If the Tories lurch to the right the LDs could usurp them in the centre.
Regarding the EU passport queues, what you can do is go in a wheelchair; then you go straight to the front of the queue and they don't ask you any questions. I did this a few times with my mum. We got through the passport gates faster than my wife, who is an EU citizen. Many of the problems in places like the Netherlands and Sweden is that they have actually suspended freedom of movement so people get caught up in passport queues anyway, even for intra EU travel.
Even though I am not an embittered remainer, it still makes me upset, having to be asked what I am doing and when I am leaving. But the thing is this, it is nostalgia for the past, for the years of borders being an insignificant anachronism, a situation that just doesn't exist anymore. Looking at the situation now, and seeing all the problems that have arisen through uncontrolled immigration across Europe; I am actually pretty glad that these countries are trying to man their borders.
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
Speaking for myself, my grandmother was a refugee from Vienna and my grandparents lived in Vienna until I was eleven, and we often visited them in Austria. Much more often then we ever visited Scotland, Wales or Ireland.
That said, although I'm disappointed by Britain leaving the EU, I'm finding that this sense of my identity is not dependent on British membership of EU institutions. That might be different for someone who doesn't have such familial connections, and I'm on track for two EU passports by the middle of the decade too, which somewhat takes the edge off.
I had a Dutch/Belgian grandmother. And I could not give a f**k. Maybe I'm reading too much into TimS's post, but to toy with the idea of inventing some continental ancestors just reiterates to me that this could be a bit of an inferiority thing?
Not really. It seemed a very natural extension to the way Britain is organised, where we're one United Kingdom, and yet we still have separate national football teams, a Scottish legal system, etc.
This has always struck me as a sign of confidence, that we are comfortable with holding multiple identities simultaneously, and so to have an additional European identity is a simple natural progression.
It's one of the things that I have always understood least about Eurosceptics and Leavers, because they seemed to regard being part of a European Union as a threat to their British identity, while not seeing being part of a United Kingdom to be a threat to their English/Cornish/Yorkshire/Welsh/Scottish identity (unless they were similarly afflicted Welsh or Scottish nationalists I suppose). Perhaps you could think of that as a lack of confidence in British identity, or a sense of inferiority of not being able to retain that identity as part of a larger whole.
I've never got this argument.
Britons share strong linguistic, historical, geographic, cultural and institutional similarities that allow them to unite under one nationality.
I don't feel anything like the same affinities or ties with continental European countries and I think the equivalence is a false one.
The first is not true of Wales - or at least, not until within living memory - even if it is true of England, Lowland Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Well, it is because most Welsh speak English - not Welsh.
They may learn a bit in school, and all the roadsigns are now bilingual, but Welsh as a first primary language is very much in the minority.
Wales will never stop feeling that it's the centre of a different Britain, I think, which is understanable. It also makes the Welsh Brexit vote even sillier and sadder, to me, as it's one of the regions that's done even worse since Brexit, exactly as predicted.
I recall seeing some analysis that suggested that once you adjust for age and education, Wales was markedly less Leave than England. It’s just that Wales has an older population and fewer of them with degrees.
By then they will almost certainly own property themselves given the age of first property ownership is 39 and be starting to look to retirement
HYUFD I am telling you as a young person, it's not going to happen.
I own a flat, I hate the Tories for what they have done to us. You are finished.
Not many young people own a flat though
Yes because of our failure of economic policy.
Housing crash now, fuck the elderly.
If there is a housing crash the young will be rogered big time, .
Exactly! The elderly with paid off mortgages will simply have less to pass on to their younger heirs. The young who have mortgages will be totally screwed!
Most people with mortgages will be screwed - including many landlords.
Most young people haven't got mortgages. Inheriting half as much isn't any kind of a problem if they were going to buy a house with it and houses have halved in value.
I'm with Horse. Bring on the housing market crash. (I don't share his attitude towards the elderly, though.)
Those figures for ages 55-64 are remarkably low?
As most of them have already bought with a mortgage by that age
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
Speaking for myself, my grandmother was a refugee from Vienna and my grandparents lived in Vienna until I was eleven, and we often visited them in Austria. Much more often then we ever visited Scotland, Wales or Ireland.
That said, although I'm disappointed by Britain leaving the EU, I'm finding that this sense of my identity is not dependent on British membership of EU institutions. That might be different for someone who doesn't have such familial connections, and I'm on track for two EU passports by the middle of the decade too, which somewhat takes the edge off.
I had a Dutch/Belgian grandmother. And I could not give a f**k. Maybe I'm reading too much into TimS's post, but to toy with the idea of inventing some continental ancestors just reiterates to me that this could be a bit of an inferiority thing?
Like I said, this is a perfect dress rehearsal for PB discussions post Scottish Indy if ever a unionist dare speak.
Anyway I am now settling down to dinner in what is almost certainly not the 14th best restaurant in Europe or even in the freezing cold Danish answer to the Greenwich peninsula that is Nordhavn.
No it isn't. My emotions if a border were to be erected between England and Scotland wouldn't be anything like yours because I wouldn't be sobbing into my hanky about being 'made a foreigner'. My sense of who I am is a lot stronger than that.
Regarding the EU passport queues, what you can do is go in a wheelchair; then you go straight to the front of the queue and they don't ask you any questions. I did this a few times with my mum. We got through the passport gates faster than my wife, who is an EU citizen. Many of the problems in places like the Netherlands and Sweden is that they have actually suspended freedom of movement so people get caught up in passport queues anyway, even for intra EU travel.
Even though I am not an embittered remainer, it still makes me upset, having to be asked what I am doing and when I am leaving. But the thing is this, it is nostalgia for the past, for the years of borders being an insignificant anachronism, a situation that just doesn't exist anymore. Looking at the situation now, and seeing all the problems that have arisen through uncontrolled immigration across Europe; I am actually pretty glad that these countries are trying to man their borders.
Having to cart the wheelchair around for the rest of your trip must have been a nuisance, surely?
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
No trains please.
I could mention how, despite not planting any spring bulbs last autumn (as I was travelling) lots of the bulbs - including tulips planted the previous year - are now coming up, which is very pleasing. I shall post pictures when they flower.
Also a definite hint of spring in the air.
Plus I have 93 houseplants. Have I mentioned my passion for houseplants before? No. Well, now you know. Every home should have some. I am particularly delighted by the strelitzias which are flourishing in a corner of the living room. My jungle corner where I sit and stare at the sea and sky.
Yesterday afternoon was wonderfully warm and sunny, sitting on the balcony without a coat, giving the dog a badly needed haircut. First day of the year with discernible warmth from the sun.
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
I could lie and say I have a German mother and Italian father or something but no, nothing as neat as that. Why do some Scots feel British and others not? Just something I’ve grown up with. Family holidays, French exchanges, then friends, colleagues, a job involving a lot of EU law, a home in France. Just one of those things.
As for citizen of the world I realise my views on this are niche but I am not a fan of borders full stop. The more global governance the better.
I don’t see it as something to be pitied, let’s face it that’s just PB rhetoric, but certainly something to be acknowledged.
Ah, another normal person with "a home in France".
There are lots of normal people with houses, flats, time shares in France or Spain or Portugal, etc and others who wanted to tour in their motorhomes or just wanted to take their dog with them on holiday. Doing this is normal and not special but they have been shafted.
Ah so to you rich is "normal". Right. Got it.
You don't have to be rich to take your dog on holiday to France. It is a real pain now. Plenty of people used to on French campsites. You don't have to be rich to have an apartment on the Costas. A friend of mine on retiring sold his bungalow and bought a motorhome to tour Europe. Brexit stopped him doing that and he was stuck on his son's drive instead. Plenty of really very ordinary people bought very modest properties in Spain, Portugal, Eastern Europe and France.
You really seem to have no clue. Have you actually been abroad because you seem to think only rich people can manage it and you seem very envious of those that do and want to stop them.
Just to be clear, he can tour Europe for up to 90 days in any 180 days within the schengen zone and you don't even need an international driving licence:
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
The progress to 'Europe is my country' was of course vehemently denied by remainers generally, even though FoM, Euro, ECB, Potemkin parliament and 'ever closer union' made it obvious that TimS was correct.
Brexiteers were derided for thinking such thoughts. Despite all the ghastly chaos it remains by miles the most significant issue in the debate and why voting Brexit was, sadly, the less bad of two bad options.
It remains obvious that most UK people, given a choice, want a single market in goods and services and a common travel area but are absolutely opposed to political union.
And of course with the recent Franco-German proposals for making tax and Foreign/Security policy QMV, they are continuing that project to this day.
Snore.
Funny how you are such a Europhile but don't actually care about what they are planning or doing. I suppose that is par for the course with you. Who cares how you are governed as long as you get your bread and circuses (or croissants and Eurovision)
If our own democracy were any sort of shining example of anything, then just perhaps you might have a little patch of solid ground on which to attempt an argument.
That wasn't the point. Your response to comments about British democratic systems is not to pretend you don't care just because you find the issue difficult.
And as I have said many times before, for me Brexit is just the first vital step along the road to far more fundamental reform of our democracy.
Knocking your living room wall down might be the first vital step along the road to a fundamental reshaping of your house, but I wouldn’t advise doing it until you have a credible workable plan that both the council and your housemates have agreed to.
Either that or have an RSJ. There are solutions to all problems if one is willing to apply them.
By then they will almost certainly own property themselves given the age of first property ownership is 39 and be starting to look to retirement
HYUFD I am telling you as a young person, it's not going to happen.
I own a flat, I hate the Tories for what they have done to us. You are finished.
Not many young people own a flat though
Yes because of our failure of economic policy.
Housing crash now, fuck the elderly.
If there is a housing crash the young will be rogered big time, .
Exactly! The elderly with paid off mortgages will simply have less to pass on to their younger heirs. The young who have mortgages will be totally screwed!
Most people with mortgages will be screwed - including many landlords.
Most young people haven't got mortgages. Inheriting half as much isn't any kind of a problem if they were going to buy a house with it and houses have halved in value.
I'm with Horse. Bring on the housing market crash. (I don't share his attitude towards the elderly, though.)
Edit: Oops. They have split people with mortgages and owner occupiers by age group, rather than the other way round. Stupid way to do it, but I should have noticed.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
Trans, you say?
Seriously, though. There is a new Austrian sleeper from Munich all the way to La Spezzia for the Cinque Terre. My next trip, I think.
Annoying train story from today. I need to be in Edinburgh for a meeting next week. Return train ticket just under £300, or a bit more on the Caledonian sleeper. Flights plus 1 night hotel £200. So I have to take the plane. The sleeper would have saved time and avoided a horrendous early morning, and saved on emissions.
I’ve been looking into trains to Morocco from London. It’s surprisingly easy: Paris on Eurostar, TGV to Madrid, train to Algeciras or Tarifa, ferry, then train via Casablanca to most cities in Morocco. Around 2 and a half days.
The Tarifa ferry is better, because it takes you straight to downtown Tangier rather than needing a bus from out of town, but both Algeciras and Tarifa are worth seeing. The smaller Tarifa ferry doesn't run on rough sea days though.
On today's topic of passport queues: for the Tarifa ferry, Morocco-bound, the passport control is on the boat. You queue up immediately upon boarding, and board early, or you'll be in the queue all crossing and won't get to enjoy it. In the Spain-bound direction, the passport control is prior to boarding, for obvious reasons. Stay at the authentic old Hotel Continental within staggering distance of the port.
(The medinas and souks of Morocco will make a man out of any nervous traveller: touts and beggars will happily stick their arm around your shoulder and follow you around until they get what they want or are agressively removed.)
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
No trains please.
I could mention how, despite not planting any spring bulbs last autumn (as I was travelling) lots of the bulbs - including tulips planted the previous year - are now coming up, which is very pleasing. I shall post pictures when they flower.
Also a definite hint of spring in the air.
Plus I have 93 houseplants. Have I mentioned my passion for houseplants before? No. Well, now you know. Every home should have some. I am particularly delighted by the strelitzias which are flourishing in a corner of the living room. My jungle corner where I sit and stare at the sea and sky.
Did I mention my mum won Redbridge in Bloom in 2019?
Not easily without working there first. Which might be an option. France doesn’t do the old golden ticket type arrangements like some other countries.
Anyway after the disappointment of Brexit decided to double down on the opportunities afforded here in Blighty and planted a vineyard in Kent.
There is a specific residents permit for those non EU nationals who wish to retire to France. There is an income requirement equivalent to the minimum wage but getting the visa costs a fraction of the equivalent for a foreigner coming to live in the UK.
Indeed there are a whole range of visa and work permits available which plenty of people have been taking advantage of. If you already have a property in France the minimum income requirement is reduced or waived as well. I have done a lot of work in France and other parts of Europe since Brexit and as long as you are sensible and get your paperwork sorted out in advance it really isn't a problem. The only country making it difficult to settle and work in is the UK.
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
Speaking for myself, my grandmother was a refugee from Vienna and my grandparents lived in Vienna until I was eleven, and we often visited them in Austria. Much more often then we ever visited Scotland, Wales or Ireland.
That said, although I'm disappointed by Britain leaving the EU, I'm finding that this sense of my identity is not dependent on British membership of EU institutions. That might be different for someone who doesn't have such familial connections, and I'm on track for two EU passports by the middle of the decade too, which somewhat takes the edge off.
I had a Dutch/Belgian grandmother. And I could not give a f**k. Maybe I'm reading too much into TimS's post, but to toy with the idea of inventing some continental ancestors just reiterates to me that this could be a bit of an inferiority thing?
Not really. It seemed a very natural extension to the way Britain is organised, where we're one United Kingdom, and yet we still have separate national football teams, a Scottish legal system, etc.
This has always struck me as a sign of confidence, that we are comfortable with holding multiple identities simultaneously, and so to have an additional European identity is a simple natural progression.
It's one of the things that I have always understood least about Eurosceptics and Leavers, because they seemed to regard being part of a European Union as a threat to their British identity, while not seeing being part of a United Kingdom to be a threat to their English/Cornish/Yorkshire/Welsh/Scottish identity (unless they were similarly afflicted Welsh or Scottish nationalists I suppose). Perhaps you could think of that as a lack of confidence in British identity, or a sense of inferiority of not being able to retain that identity as part of a larger whole.
I've never got this argument.
Britons share strong linguistic, historical, geographic, cultural and institutional similarities that allow them to unite under one nationality.
I don't feel anything like the same affinities or ties with continental European countries and I think the equivalence is a false one.
Linguistic is the huge one here, of course. Without a common language, a demos is very difficult if not impossible to create. And no demos, no democracy, naturally.
Also, insofar as there were historical, geographic and cultural - and maybe institutional - similarities with the rest of the EU, these were diluted not strengthened by eastwards expansion.
Bit more than that though, perhaps?
Otherwise Australia, Canada and NZ and the UK wouldn't be different countries.
Actually, come to think of it, I feel closer affinities with all of those compared to European countries.
Particularly France - always struck by how different that feels when you cross the channel and enter the pas de calais. And it's only 20 miles away.
That’s the thing isn’t it? I remember a similar conversation with a client who planned to vote Brexit ahead of the vote. We were in Chicago. The US felt much more familiar to him than European countries. I felt the opposite. Tomayto Tomarto. We agreed we’d never agree, because somewhere deep down our instincts were different.
Perhaps what we all need to do is simply acknowledge those differences. It’s not a question of pride or pity.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
Trans, you say?
Seriously, though. There is a new Austrian sleeper from Munich all the way to La Spezzia for the Cinque Terre. My next trip, I think.
Annoying train story from today. I need to be in Edinburgh for a meeting next week. Return train ticket just under £300, or a bit more on the Caledonian sleeper. Flights plus 1 night hotel £200. So I have to take the plane. The sleeper would have saved time and avoided a horrendous early morning, and saved on emissions.
I’ve been looking into trains to Morocco from London. It’s surprisingly easy: Paris on Eurostar, TGV to Madrid, train to Algeciras or Tarifa, ferry, then train via Casablanca to most cities in Morocco. Around 2 and a half days.
The Tarifa ferry is better, because it takes you straight to downtown Tangier rather than needing a bus from out of town, but both Algeciras and Tarifa are worth seeing. The smaller Tarifa ferry doesn't run on rough sea days though.
On today's topic of passport queues: for the Tarifa ferry, Morocco-bound, the passport control is on the boat. You queue up immediately upon boarding, and board early, or you'll be in the queue all crossing and won't get to enjoy it. In the Spain-bound direction, the passport control is prior to boarding, for obvious reasons. Stay at the authentic old Hotel Continental within staggering distance of the port.
(The medinas and souks of Morocco will make a man out of any nervous traveller: touts and beggars will happily stick their arm around your shoulder and follow you around until they get what they want or are agressively removed.)
I hate the concept of "sleeper trains". Why would you want to ride a train route in the dark? Missing all the landmarks and/or scenery?
By then they will almost certainly own property themselves given the age of first property ownership is 39 and be starting to look to retirement
HYUFD I am telling you as a young person, it's not going to happen.
I own a flat, I hate the Tories for what they have done to us. You are finished.
Not many young people own a flat though
Yes because of our failure of economic policy.
Housing crash now, fuck the elderly.
If there is a housing crash the young will be rogered big time, .
Exactly! The elderly with paid off mortgages will simply have less to pass on to their younger heirs. The young who have mortgages will be totally screwed!
Most people with mortgages will be screwed - including many landlords.
Most young people haven't got mortgages. Inheriting half as much isn't any kind of a problem if they were going to buy a house with it and houses have halved in value.
I'm with Horse. Bring on the housing market crash. (I don't share his attitude towards the elderly, though.)
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
Speaking for myself, my grandmother was a refugee from Vienna and my grandparents lived in Vienna until I was eleven, and we often visited them in Austria. Much more often then we ever visited Scotland, Wales or Ireland.
That said, although I'm disappointed by Britain leaving the EU, I'm finding that this sense of my identity is not dependent on British membership of EU institutions. That might be different for someone who doesn't have such familial connections, and I'm on track for two EU passports by the middle of the decade too, which somewhat takes the edge off.
I had a Dutch/Belgian grandmother. And I could not give a f**k. Maybe I'm reading too much into TimS's post, but to toy with the idea of inventing some continental ancestors just reiterates to me that this could be a bit of an inferiority thing?
Like I said, this is a perfect dress rehearsal for PB discussions post Scottish Indy if ever a unionist dare speak.
Anyway I am now settling down to dinner in what is almost certainly not the 14th best restaurant in Europe or even in the freezing cold Danish answer to the Greenwich peninsula that is Nordhavn.
No it isn't. My emotions if a border were to be erected between England and Scotland wouldn't be anything like yours because I wouldn't be sobbing into my hanky about being 'made a foreigner'. My sense of who I am is a lot stronger than that.
You’ll be sobbing into your hanky if HYUFD, tank commander prevents you from crossing.
I won't, particularly. I would be annoyed, not woebegone. I have huge respect and love for the people of Scotland, but I am comfortable with my own identity - I'm not here trying to shed my Englishness, neither am I aggressively/boorishly hanging on to it and ignoring what living in Scotland can teach me.
"Police leaders have apologised for “profound failures” during and after the Hillsborough disaster as they announce an updated code of ethics requiring officers to show professionalism and “ethical decision-making”.
"The Metropolitan Police force has asked hundreds of retired officers with histories of misconduct records to re-apply for jobs in an effort to boost numbers.
More than 250 officers who were disciplined at misconduct proceedings during their career have received letters inviting them to return because of their “valuable skills and experience”.
Hmm ....
I think I will be writing headers about the police for some time to come.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
The trains are much better in the EU.
Well, the high speed ones, anyway. Although even most of their local trains seem more reliable than ours.
That's certainly not true. I've had some utterly dire experiences on French regional trains, including breakdowns and multi hour delays.
And that's when they turned up at all.
I did see a rural French station master come out of his office to take a massive slash on the platform though before going back to work, which I thought was very French.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
Trans, you say?
Seriously, though. There is a new Austrian sleeper from Munich all the way to La Spezzia for the Cinque Terre. My next trip, I think.
Annoying train story from today. I need to be in Edinburgh for a meeting next week. Return train ticket just under £300, or a bit more on the Caledonian sleeper. Flights plus 1 night hotel £200. So I have to take the plane. The sleeper would have saved time and avoided a horrendous early morning, and saved on emissions.
I’ve been looking into trains to Morocco from London. It’s surprisingly easy: Paris on Eurostar, TGV to Madrid, train to Algeciras or Tarifa, ferry, then train via Casablanca to most cities in Morocco. Around 2 and a half days.
Have you come across The Man in Seat 61 (seat61.com)? One of the most joyful corners of the internet for anyone who enjoys planning a good train journey. It took me all the way to Beijing for the Olympics.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
Trans, you say?
Seriously, though. There is a new Austrian sleeper from Munich all the way to La Spezzia for the Cinque Terre. My next trip, I think.
Annoying train story from today. I need to be in Edinburgh for a meeting next week. Return train ticket just under £300, or a bit more on the Caledonian sleeper. Flights plus 1 night hotel £200. So I have to take the plane. The sleeper would have saved time and avoided a horrendous early morning, and saved on emissions.
I’ve been looking into trains to Morocco from London. It’s surprisingly easy: Paris on Eurostar, TGV to Madrid, train to Algeciras or Tarifa, ferry, then train via Casablanca to most cities in Morocco. Around 2 and a half days.
The Tarifa ferry is better, because it takes you straight to downtown Tangier rather than needing a bus from out of town, but both Algeciras and Tarifa are worth seeing. The smaller Tarifa ferry doesn't run on rough sea days though.
On today's topic of passport queues: for the Tarifa ferry, Morocco-bound, the passport control is on the boat. You queue up immediately upon boarding, and board early, or you'll be in the queue all crossing and won't get to enjoy it. In the Spain-bound direction, the passport control is prior to boarding, for obvious reasons. Stay at the authentic old Hotel Continental within staggering distance of the port.
(The medinas and souks of Morocco will make a man out of any nervous traveller: touts and beggars will happily stick their arm around your shoulder and follow you around until they get what they want or are agressively removed.)
It’s a shame if it’s gone back to being like that? Around the turn of a century the new king introduced a law to throw into some dark dungeon anyone that hassled a tourist, and the situation improved considerably compared to the never-ending pestering of the ‘90s.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
No trains please.
I could mention how, despite not planting any spring bulbs last autumn (as I was travelling) lots of the bulbs - including tulips planted the previous year - are now coming up, which is very pleasing. I shall post pictures when they flower.
Also a definite hint of spring in the air.
Plus I have 93 houseplants. Have I mentioned my passion for houseplants before? No. Well, now you know. Every home should have some. I am particularly delighted by the strelitzias which are flourishing in a corner of the living room. My jungle corner where I sit and stare at the sea and sky.
Ah, a safe topic. I can delete the rant which will now stay forever hidden.
Mrs Flatlander got a Swiss Cheese Plant for her 13th birthday. That was, er, some time ago, and it now occupies a significant proportion of my living room. It attacks guests frequently, grumbling in the corner like the Aspidistra from the Adventure Game (anyone remember that?).
I don't mind that so much, or the cacti, some of which are now approaching football size, but whatever you do, don't have money plants. They are a menace.
The problem is we can never bring ourselves to send them to the compost heap in the sky.
On the spring front, I saw some daffs out at the weekend here, and not the exotic ones that flower early. Will be time to go out hunting the native ones soon.
I think the affinity thing is a red herring. Sure I feel more European than American, but that is highly qualified, and rests essentially on my understanding of Britain as part of Europe.
I certainly feel closer to Americans than the French.
Who knows really if my preferences are even transitive.
The point is that EU membership makes me (a British passport holder) richer and freer, also my children. It’s that simple. I don’t need to suddenly pretend to an affinity with, say, Slovenes, that I don’t have.
Personally, I’m saddened at how badly Brexit had gone. In some ways, it has gone worse than I imagined.
I didn’t fully predict the debauch of politics and public institutions (today’s report from Transparency International another sign of this). I actually also thought that any resultant deal would be slightly closer to the status quo ante; for example I thought we’d end up with something closer to a Swiss deal. Northern Ireland is worse than I thought, Scotland (marginally) better.
I’m astonished that nobody senior on the Brexit side has been able to construct a coherent vision and path for it.
Not May, not Johnson, not Cummings, not Rishi. Not Farage, Tice, not Hannan or Carswell. Not Rees-Mogg, Davis, or Raab. Not Sunak.
I can see *potential* opportunities from Brexit, or rather, maybe, opportunities that a Brexit would *need* to exploit in order to be successful.
It gives me no satisfaction to see the UK in such a state.
Gove is the only one who's capable of that vision, IMHO. He demonstrated at DEFRA and has done so since whenever he's had the chance.
I often wonder if things had been different had he won the 2016 leadership contest.
How is it that you feel Gove established a good post-Brexit Defra policy (if you don't mind summarising, or point me to an article)?
I'll dig something out tomorrow- can't be arsed tonight and have got the kids - but I liked his approach on subsidies for sustainable farming to replace CAP and the marine "blue" zones around the UK coastline to preserve biodiversity.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
The trains are much better in the EU.
Well, the high speed ones, anyway. Although even most of their local trains seem more reliable than ours.
That's certainly not true. I've had some utterly dire experiences on French regional trains, including breakdowns and multi hour delays.
And that's when they turned up at all.
I did see a rural French station master come out of his office to take a massive slash on the platform though before going back to work, which I thought was very French.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
Trans, you say?
Seriously, though. There is a new Austrian sleeper from Munich all the way to La Spezzia for the Cinque Terre. My next trip, I think.
Annoying train story from today. I need to be in Edinburgh for a meeting next week. Return train ticket just under £300, or a bit more on the Caledonian sleeper. Flights plus 1 night hotel £200. So I have to take the plane. The sleeper would have saved time and avoided a horrendous early morning, and saved on emissions.
I’ve been looking into trains to Morocco from London. It’s surprisingly easy: Paris on Eurostar, TGV to Madrid, train to Algeciras or Tarifa, ferry, then train via Casablanca to most cities in Morocco. Around 2 and a half days.
The only problem with the sleeper is that you don't sleep on it; like almost all sleeper trains; so the next day is ruined. I remember my old boss doing the same thing, getting the sleeper and getting in to work at 8am, then having to go home at 10 because she was exhausted. The new caledonian sleeper trains just aren't any better, I took it to Inverness and my bunk seemed to be on some kind of brake pad, it was screeching all night. They don't allow you in to the buffet if you are not in the 'club' berth. You can read lots of horror stories about this service if you look, IE people being inexplicably put on replacement busses at 3 am in Carlisle, etc.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
The trains are much better in the EU.
Well, the high speed ones, anyway. Although even most of their local trains seem more reliable than ours.
That's certainly not true. I've had some utterly dire experiences on French regional trains, including breakdowns and multi hour delays.
And that's when they turned up at all.
I did see a rural French station master come out of his office to take a massive slash on the platform though before going back to work, which I thought was very French.
I see others have chewed over the latest R&W Blue Wall polling. Again, it's a misnomer to assume the Blue Wall is simply or wholly Conservative vs LD. A number of seats in said wall are actually Con-Lab marginals.
It's also worth stating, contrary to the "wisdom" imparted by others, the Conservatives are doing worse in the Blue Wall than the Red Wall. The England swing in their UK poll was 18% and in the Blue Wall it's nearer 20% whereas in the Red Wall the swing is 17.5%.
This means the Conservatives are doing worse in their core seats (which they can afford to) than in their marginals but only marginally (sorry). Either way, we're down at between 240 and 280 on the list of Conservative seats which suggests (currently) a surviving Conservative Party of 80-120 seats.
That wouldn't be an extinction event (six seats didn't end the Liberals) but it would be the worst result for the Conservatives since 1997 and a feature of FPTP is a bad result for the Conservatives can be worse than a bad result for Labour.
...six seats didn't end the Liberals...
Sorry Stodge but 40 seats ended the Liberals in 1924. The End as a governing party.
Now, if the Tories dropped to 40 seats and subsequently carried on as an electoral irrelevance that's fine by me.
*PS The LDs are not the Liberal Party.
It hasn’t stopped them going back to their constituencies and preparing for government ever since!
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
No trains please.
I could mention how, despite not planting any spring bulbs last autumn (as I was travelling) lots of the bulbs - including tulips planted the previous year - are now coming up, which is very pleasing. I shall post pictures when they flower.
Also a definite hint of spring in the air.
Plus I have 93 houseplants. Have I mentioned my passion for houseplants before? No. Well, now you know. Every home should have some. I am particularly delighted by the strelitzias which are flourishing in a corner of the living room. My jungle corner where I sit and stare at the sea and sky.
Yesterday afternoon was wonderfully warm and sunny, sitting on the balcony without a coat, giving the dog a badly needed haircut. First day of the year with discernible warmth from the sun.
(Your cushion doesn’t match well with your sofa)
Brave man criticising my interior design!
Very brave.
The photo is cropped. The blue is not a cushion but a wool throw which I had placed there prior to moving it to the room where it belongs.
As you will see not only do my cushions match the sofa, but my cat does too!
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
The progress to 'Europe is my country' was of course vehemently denied by remainers generally, even though FoM, Euro, ECB, Potemkin parliament and 'ever closer union' made it obvious that TimS was correct.
Brexiteers were derided for thinking such thoughts. Despite all the ghastly chaos it remains by miles the most significant issue in the debate and why voting Brexit was, sadly, the less bad of two bad options.
It remains obvious that most UK people, given a choice, want a single market in goods and services and a common travel area but are absolutely opposed to political union.
And of course with the recent Franco-German proposals for making tax and Foreign/Security policy QMV, they are continuing that project to this day.
Snore.
Funny how you are such a Europhile but don't actually care about what they are planning or doing. I suppose that is par for the course with you. Who cares how you are governed as long as you get your bread and circuses (or croissants and Eurovision)
If our own democracy were any sort of shining example of anything, then just perhaps you might have a little patch of solid ground on which to attempt an argument.
That wasn't the point. Your response to comments about British democratic systems is not to pretend you don't care just because you find the issue difficult.
And as I have said many times before, for me Brexit is just the first vital step along the road to far more fundamental reform of our democracy.
Knocking your living room wall down might be the first vital step along the road to a fundamental reshaping of your house, but I wouldn’t advise doing it until you have a credible workable plan that both the council and your housemates have agreed to.
Either that or have an RSJ. There are solutions to all problems if one is willing to apply them.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
Trans, you say?
Seriously, though. There is a new Austrian sleeper from Munich all the way to La Spezzia for the Cinque Terre. My next trip, I think.
Annoying train story from today. I need to be in Edinburgh for a meeting next week. Return train ticket just under £300, or a bit more on the Caledonian sleeper. Flights plus 1 night hotel £200. So I have to take the plane. The sleeper would have saved time and avoided a horrendous early morning, and saved on emissions.
I’ve been looking into trains to Morocco from London. It’s surprisingly easy: Paris on Eurostar, TGV to Madrid, train to Algeciras or Tarifa, ferry, then train via Casablanca to most cities in Morocco. Around 2 and a half days.
You are The Man In Seat 61 and I claim my £5 delay repay voucher.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
Trans, you say?
Seriously, though. There is a new Austrian sleeper from Munich all the way to La Spezzia for the Cinque Terre. My next trip, I think.
Annoying train story from today. I need to be in Edinburgh for a meeting next week. Return train ticket just under £300, or a bit more on the Caledonian sleeper. Flights plus 1 night hotel £200. So I have to take the plane. The sleeper would have saved time and avoided a horrendous early morning, and saved on emissions.
I’ve been looking into trains to Morocco from London. It’s surprisingly easy: Paris on Eurostar, TGV to Madrid, train to Algeciras or Tarifa, ferry, then train via Casablanca to most cities in Morocco. Around 2 and a half days.
The Tarifa ferry is better, because it takes you straight to downtown Tangier rather than needing a bus from out of town, but both Algeciras and Tarifa are worth seeing. The smaller Tarifa ferry doesn't run on rough sea days though.
On today's topic of passport queues: for the Tarifa ferry, Morocco-bound, the passport control is on the boat. You queue up immediately upon boarding, and board early, or you'll be in the queue all crossing and won't get to enjoy it. In the Spain-bound direction, the passport control is prior to boarding, for obvious reasons. Stay at the authentic old Hotel Continental within staggering distance of the port.
(The medinas and souks of Morocco will make a man out of any nervous traveller: touts and beggars will happily stick their arm around your shoulder and follow you around until they get what they want or are agressively removed.)
I hate the concept of "sleeper trains". Why would you want to ride a train route in the dark? Missing all the landmarks and/or scenery?
Sleeper trains are (or were, since they’ve mostly gone) excellent! Especially those where you used to be able to put your car on the back.
Though we did have one panicked moment when our Belgian train departed and we trundled past our own car on the back of another train. It seems they used to meet up somewhere in the dead of night and swap all the carriages about, no idea why.
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
I was born with dual citizenship - just the pure luck of the birth lottery. I was raised in a time when joining the EEC (as the EU-to-be was back then) was viewed as a good thing. As I grew up the EU was just something that was there and I appreciated the ease of travel and the ease at which I could do work for companies in Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid.
Then Brexit happened and to my own surprise, I felt the loss far more keenly than I expected. But I was lucky enough to have that other passport.
My UK one expires this year. I may not bother renewing it.
This must be a different Beverley to the "BETTER OFF OUT!" one who used to inhabit this board.
In a way it is. I was lazy enough pre-referendum not to dig too deeply into the generally accepted narratives of EU corruption that was part of a lot of the political discourse and also appeared over much of the press, and many of the ideas put forward by the likes of Hannan seemed plausible enough on the surface. So being more on the BOO side of the argument was really neither here nor there because what did it matter?
When the referendum loomed I decided that I needed to look into things a bit more because maybe it did matter and it did not take too long to found out that most of the BOO stuff was utter cr*p. SO I voted Remain.
Then the vilification started of those who expressed any kind of anger or disbelief about the result and I mean more than me. Anyone who criticised Leave was apparently fair game.
I found the rhetoric of the Brexiteers, especially the ERG and their followers, both repulsive and xenophobic. Within days of the vote some of the more vociferous PBers were calling me a traitor for saying Brexit was wrong and the "You lost, suck it up" phase began.
Then the Brexit lies began to unwind, people who had voted leave to "give the govt a kicking" started the first Bregret phase. There was the "Undo Brexit petition" once it became obvious how much of Brexit was marketed on outright lies, deceptions and intolerance of foreigners (esp. Turks).
It was a shambles, A great big undignified mess predicated on untruths and fantasies. It made me ashamed that my own country could be brought so low so easily. The UK went from a leading country to having the politics of a banana republic in just a few years.
Having a dual nationality, it was easy for the whole mess to push me away from Britishness more and more as time went on. Theresa May's speech was final straw for me when she made it that you were either a Brexiteer or an enemy of the state as she dog whistled to the extremists and nationalists.
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
Speaking for myself, my grandmother was a refugee from Vienna and my grandparents lived in Vienna until I was eleven, and we often visited them in Austria. Much more often then we ever visited Scotland, Wales or Ireland.
That said, although I'm disappointed by Britain leaving the EU, I'm finding that this sense of my identity is not dependent on British membership of EU institutions. That might be different for someone who doesn't have such familial connections, and I'm on track for two EU passports by the middle of the decade too, which somewhat takes the edge off.
I had a Dutch/Belgian grandmother. And I could not give a f**k. Maybe I'm reading too much into TimS's post, but to toy with the idea of inventing some continental ancestors just reiterates to me that this could be a bit of an inferiority thing?
Like I said, this is a perfect dress rehearsal for PB discussions post Scottish Indy if ever a unionist dare speak.
Anyway I am now settling down to dinner in what is almost certainly not the 14th best restaurant in Europe or even in the freezing cold Danish answer to the Greenwich peninsula that is Nordhavn.
No it isn't. My emotions if a border were to be erected between England and Scotland wouldn't be anything like yours because I wouldn't be sobbing into my hanky about being 'made a foreigner'. My sense of who I am is a lot stronger than that.
You’re a Scottish unionist?
I am English, living in Scotland. I love my adopted country and feel more British than English, but it wouldn't make me feel inadequate to join second class queue and get my passport stamped on either side. My queue IS the good queue, because I'm in it. It's as simple as that.
I do have a vison of you dashing veggie wraps and disgusting fizzy lager from the hands of your fellow queuers..
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
No trains please.
I could mention how, despite not planting any spring bulbs last autumn (as I was travelling) lots of the bulbs - including tulips planted the previous year - are now coming up, which is very pleasing. I shall post pictures when they flower.
Also a definite hint of spring in the air.
Plus I have 93 houseplants. Have I mentioned my passion for houseplants before? No. Well, now you know. Every home should have some. I am particularly delighted by the strelitzias which are flourishing in a corner of the living room. My jungle corner where I sit and stare at the sea and sky.
Did I mention my mum won Redbridge in Bloom in 2019?
You have. One of my ambitions is to have a garden so good that it can be opened to visitors under the National Gardens Scheme. If it were featured on Gardeners World or in The English Garden magazine I think I'd die of happiness!
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
Trans, you say?
Seriously, though. There is a new Austrian sleeper from Munich all the way to La Spezzia for the Cinque Terre. My next trip, I think.
Annoying train story from today. I need to be in Edinburgh for a meeting next week. Return train ticket just under £300, or a bit more on the Caledonian sleeper. Flights plus 1 night hotel £200. So I have to take the plane. The sleeper would have saved time and avoided a horrendous early morning, and saved on emissions.
I’ve been looking into trains to Morocco from London. It’s surprisingly easy: Paris on Eurostar, TGV to Madrid, train to Algeciras or Tarifa, ferry, then train via Casablanca to most cities in Morocco. Around 2 and a half days.
The Tarifa ferry is better, because it takes you straight to downtown Tangier rather than needing a bus from out of town, but both Algeciras and Tarifa are worth seeing. The smaller Tarifa ferry doesn't run on rough sea days though.
On today's topic of passport queues: for the Tarifa ferry, Morocco-bound, the passport control is on the boat. You queue up immediately upon boarding, and board early, or you'll be in the queue all crossing and won't get to enjoy it. In the Spain-bound direction, the passport control is prior to boarding, for obvious reasons. Stay at the authentic old Hotel Continental within staggering distance of the port.
(The medinas and souks of Morocco will make a man out of any nervous traveller: touts and beggars will happily stick their arm around your shoulder and follow you around until they get what they want or are agressively removed.)
It’s a shame if it’s gone back to being like that? Around the turn of a century the new king introduced a law to throw into some dark dungeon anyone that hassled a tourist, and the situation improved considerably compared to the never-ending pestering of the ‘90s.
Yes, it seemed pretty reasonable and non-hassley when I was there last (admittedly a few years ago now).
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
No trains please.
I could mention how, despite not planting any spring bulbs last autumn (as I was travelling) lots of the bulbs - including tulips planted the previous year - are now coming up, which is very pleasing. I shall post pictures when they flower.
Also a definite hint of spring in the air.
Plus I have 93 houseplants. Have I mentioned my passion for houseplants before? No. Well, now you know. Every home should have some. I am particularly delighted by the strelitzias which are flourishing in a corner of the living room. My jungle corner where I sit and stare at the sea and sky.
Did I mention my mum won Redbridge in Bloom in 2019?
You have. One of my ambitions is to have a garden so good that it can be opened to visitors under the National Gardens Scheme. If it were featured on Gardeners World or in The English Garden magazine I think I'd die of happiness!
You have a great garden (from pics you posted previous) - just a tad bigger than a suburban garden in Ilford
By then they will almost certainly own property themselves given the age of first property ownership is 39 and be starting to look to retirement
HYUFD I am telling you as a young person, it's not going to happen.
I own a flat, I hate the Tories for what they have done to us. You are finished.
Not many young people own a flat though
Yes because of our failure of economic policy.
Housing crash now, fuck the elderly.
If there is a housing crash the young will be rogered big time, .
Exactly! The elderly with paid off mortgages will simply have less to pass on to their younger heirs. The young who have mortgages will be totally screwed!
Most people with mortgages will be screwed - including many landlords.
Most young people haven't got mortgages. Inheriting half as much isn't any kind of a problem if they were going to buy a house with it and houses have halved in value.
I'm with Horse. Bring on the housing market crash. (I don't share his attitude towards the elderly, though.)
Those figures for ages 55-64 are remarkably low?
As most of them have already bought with a mortgage by that age
Clearly not, based on that graph.
No clearly, as DJ14 realises now it is cumulative.
So in fact 52% of those aged 35-44 have bought a property with a mortgage, not 29%
I see others have chewed over the latest R&W Blue Wall polling. Again, it's a misnomer to assume the Blue Wall is simply or wholly Conservative vs LD. A number of seats in said wall are actually Con-Lab marginals.
It's also worth stating, contrary to the "wisdom" imparted by others, the Conservatives are doing worse in the Blue Wall than the Red Wall. The England swing in their UK poll was 18% and in the Blue Wall it's nearer 20% whereas in the Red Wall the swing is 17.5%.
This means the Conservatives are doing worse in their core seats (which they can afford to) than in their marginals but only marginally (sorry). Either way, we're down at between 240 and 280 on the list of Conservative seats which suggests (currently) a surviving Conservative Party of 80-120 seats.
That wouldn't be an extinction event (six seats didn't end the Liberals) but it would be the worst result for the Conservatives since 1997 and a feature of FPTP is a bad result for the Conservatives can be worse than a bad result for Labour.
...six seats didn't end the Liberals...
Sorry Stodge but 40 seats ended the Liberals in 1924. The End as a governing party.
Now, if the Tories dropped to 40 seats and subsequently carried on as an electoral irrelevance that's fine by me.
*PS The LDs are not the Liberal Party.
It hasn’t stopped them going back to their constituencies and preparing for government ever since!
Fair point. Happy for the Tories to do too ad nauseam too.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
Trans, you say?
Seriously, though. There is a new Austrian sleeper from Munich all the way to La Spezzia for the Cinque Terre. My next trip, I think.
Annoying train story from today. I need to be in Edinburgh for a meeting next week. Return train ticket just under £300, or a bit more on the Caledonian sleeper. Flights plus 1 night hotel £200. So I have to take the plane. The sleeper would have saved time and avoided a horrendous early morning, and saved on emissions.
I’ve been looking into trains to Morocco from London. It’s surprisingly easy: Paris on Eurostar, TGV to Madrid, train to Algeciras or Tarifa, ferry, then train via Casablanca to most cities in Morocco. Around 2 and a half days.
The Tarifa ferry is better, because it takes you straight to downtown Tangier rather than needing a bus from out of town, but both Algeciras and Tarifa are worth seeing. The smaller Tarifa ferry doesn't run on rough sea days though.
On today's topic of passport queues: for the Tarifa ferry, Morocco-bound, the passport control is on the boat. You queue up immediately upon boarding, and board early, or you'll be in the queue all crossing and won't get to enjoy it. In the Spain-bound direction, the passport control is prior to boarding, for obvious reasons. Stay at the authentic old Hotel Continental within staggering distance of the port.
(The medinas and souks of Morocco will make a man out of any nervous traveller: touts and beggars will happily stick their arm around your shoulder and follow you around until they get what they want or are agressively removed.)
I hate the concept of "sleeper trains". Why would you want to ride a train route in the dark? Missing all the landmarks and/or scenery?
The northbound Caledonian Sleeper should be timed to reach Lancaster at dawn, so that you can sleep through all the boring bits but see the scenic bits. The southbound sleeper should reach Lancaster at dusk.
I see others have chewed over the latest R&W Blue Wall polling. Again, it's a misnomer to assume the Blue Wall is simply or wholly Conservative vs LD. A number of seats in said wall are actually Con-Lab marginals.
It's also worth stating, contrary to the "wisdom" imparted by others, the Conservatives are doing worse in the Blue Wall than the Red Wall. The England swing in their UK poll was 18% and in the Blue Wall it's nearer 20% whereas in the Red Wall the swing is 17.5%.
This means the Conservatives are doing worse in their core seats (which they can afford to) than in their marginals but only marginally (sorry). Either way, we're down at between 240 and 280 on the list of Conservative seats which suggests (currently) a surviving Conservative Party of 80-120 seats.
That wouldn't be an extinction event (six seats didn't end the Liberals) but it would be the worst result for the Conservatives since 1997 and a feature of FPTP is a bad result for the Conservatives can be worse than a bad result for Labour.
...six seats didn't end the Liberals...
Sorry Stodge but 40 seats ended the Liberals in 1924. The End as a governing party.
Now, if the Tories dropped to 40 seats and subsequently carried on as an electoral irrelevance that's fine by me.
*PS The LDs are not the Liberal Party.
It hasn’t stopped them going back to their constituencies and preparing for government ever since!
Fair point. Happy for the Tories to do too ad nauseam too.
"Go back to your shareholders and prepare for an HMRC investigation!"
In the next five years, it is likely that AI will begin to reduce employment for college-educated workers. As the technology continues to advance, it will be able to perform tasks that were previously thought to require a high level of education and skill. This could lead to a displacement of workers in certain industries, as companies look to cut costs by automating processes. While it is difficult to predict the exact extent of this trend, it is clear that AI will have a significant impact on the job market for college-educated workers. It will be important for individuals to stay up to date on the latest developments in AI and to consider how their skills and expertise can be leveraged in a world where machines are increasingly able to perform many tasks.
Goodness me, it's ill tempered on here tonight. Like everyone has turned into Topping or something.
Can we talk about something pleasantly neutral like trains?
No trains please.
I could mention how, despite not planting any spring bulbs last autumn (as I was travelling) lots of the bulbs - including tulips planted the previous year - are now coming up, which is very pleasing. I shall post pictures when they flower.
Also a definite hint of spring in the air.
Plus I have 93 houseplants. Have I mentioned my passion for houseplants before? No. Well, now you know. Every home should have some. I am particularly delighted by the strelitzias which are flourishing in a corner of the living room. My jungle corner where I sit and stare at the sea and sky.
Did I mention my mum won Redbridge in Bloom in 2019?
You have. One of my ambitions is to have a garden so good that it can be opened to visitors under the National Gardens Scheme. If it were featured on Gardeners World or in The English Garden magazine I think I'd die of happiness!
Then I hope you don't for some years yet, because we would miss you.
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
I was born with dual citizenship - just the pure luck of the birth lottery. I was raised in a time when joining the EEC (as the EU-to-be was back then) was viewed as a good thing. As I grew up the EU was just something that was there and I appreciated the ease of travel and the ease at which I could do work for companies in Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid.
Then Brexit happened and to my own surprise, I felt the loss far more keenly than I expected. But I was lucky enough to have that other passport.
My UK one expires this year. I may not bother renewing it.
Pretty much the same for me, except without the Irish Passport. I really feel the loss of being a European Citizen. What really bothered me most was facing my Greek, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish colleagues after my country had voted them unwanted. It really pissed me off to have my friends and colleagues treated so rudely by my country. It was so ungrateful and so rude.
I am British and will be staying here, but I do like my country less than I did.
Personally, I’m saddened at how badly Brexit had gone. In some ways, it has gone worse than I imagined.
I didn’t fully predict the debauch of politics and public institutions (today’s report from Transparency International another sign of this). I actually also thought that any resultant deal would be slightly closer to the status quo ante; for example I thought we’d end up with something closer to a Swiss deal. Northern Ireland is worse than I thought, Scotland (marginally) better.
I’m astonished that nobody senior on the Brexit side has been able to construct a coherent vision and path for it.
Not May, not Johnson, not Cummings, not Rishi. Not Farage, Tice, not Hannan or Carswell. Not Rees-Mogg, Davis, or Raab. Not Sunak.
I can see *potential* opportunities from Brexit, or rather, maybe, opportunities that a Brexit would *need* to exploit in order to be successful.
It gives me no satisfaction to see the UK in such a state.
Gove is the only one who's capable of that vision, IMHO. He demonstrated at DEFRA and has done so since whenever he's had the chance.
I often wonder if things had been different had he won the 2016 leadership contest.
I don't think Gove is capable of selling a vision. You'd have needed Cameron to lead the campaign for Brexit and to sell Gove's implementation.
In the next five years, it is likely that AI will begin to reduce employment for college-educated workers. As the technology continues to advance, it will be able to perform tasks that were previously thought to require a high level of education and skill. This could lead to a displacement of workers in certain industries, as companies look to cut costs by automating processes. While it is difficult to predict the exact extent of this trend, it is clear that AI will have a significant impact on the job market for college-educated workers. It will be important for individuals to stay up to date on the latest developments in AI and to consider how their skills and expertise can be leveraged in a world where machines are increasingly able to perform many tasks.
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
Speaking for myself, my grandmother was a refugee from Vienna and my grandparents lived in Vienna until I was eleven, and we often visited them in Austria. Much more often then we ever visited Scotland, Wales or Ireland.
That said, although I'm disappointed by Britain leaving the EU, I'm finding that this sense of my identity is not dependent on British membership of EU institutions. That might be different for someone who doesn't have such familial connections, and I'm on track for two EU passports by the middle of the decade too, which somewhat takes the edge off.
I had a Dutch/Belgian grandmother. And I could not give a f**k. Maybe I'm reading too much into TimS's post, but to toy with the idea of inventing some continental ancestors just reiterates to me that this could be a bit of an inferiority thing?
Like I said, this is a perfect dress rehearsal for PB discussions post Scottish Indy if ever a unionist dare speak.
Anyway I am now settling down to dinner in what is almost certainly not the 14th best restaurant in Europe or even in the freezing cold Danish answer to the Greenwich peninsula that is Nordhavn.
No it isn't. My emotions if a border were to be erected between England and Scotland wouldn't be anything like yours because I wouldn't be sobbing into my hanky about being 'made a foreigner'. My sense of who I am is a lot stronger than that.
You’re a Scottish unionist?
I am English, living in Scotland. I love my adopted country and feel more British than English, but it wouldn't make me feel inadequate to join second class queue and get my passport stamped on either side. My queue IS the good queue, because I'm in it. It's as simple as that.
I do have a vison of you dashing veggie wraps and disgusting fizzy lager from the hands of your fellow queuers..
You mean he has gone native and prefers this sort of takeaway?
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
I was born with dual citizenship - just the pure luck of the birth lottery. I was raised in a time when joining the EEC (as the EU-to-be was back then) was viewed as a good thing. As I grew up the EU was just something that was there and I appreciated the ease of travel and the ease at which I could do work for companies in Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid.
Then Brexit happened and to my own surprise, I felt the loss far more keenly than I expected. But I was lucky enough to have that other passport.
My UK one expires this year. I may not bother renewing it.
This must be a different Beverley to the "BETTER OFF OUT!" one who used to inhabit this board.
In a way it is. I was lazy enough pre-referendum not to dig too deeply into the generally accepted narratives of EU corruption that was part of a lot of the political discourse and also appeared over much of the press, and many of the ideas put forward by the likes of Hannan seemed plausible enough on the surface. So being more on the BOO side of the argument was really neither here nor there because what did it matter?
When the referendum loomed I decided that I needed to look into things a bit more because maybe it did matter and it did not take too long to found out that most of the BOO stuff was utter cr*p. SO I voted Remain.
Then the vilification started of those who expressed any kind of anger or disbelief about the result and I mean more than me. Anyone who criticised Leave was apparently fair game.
I found the rhetoric of the Brexiteers, especially the ERG and their followers, both repulsive and xenophobic. Within days of the vote some of the more vociferous PBers were calling me a traitor for saying Brexit was wrong and the "You lost, suck it up" phase began.
Then the Brexit lies began to unwind, people who had voted leave to "give the govt a kicking" started the first Bregret phase. There was the "Undo Brexit petition" once it became obvious how much of Brexit was marketed on outright lies, deceptions and intolerance of foreigners (esp. Turks).
It was a shambles, A great big undignified mess predicated on untruths and fantasies. It made me ashamed that my own country could be brought so low so easily. The UK went from a leading country to having the politics of a banana republic in just a few years.
Having a dual nationality, it was easy for the whole mess to push me away from Britishness more and more as time went on. Theresa May's speech was final straw for me when she made it that you were either a Brexiteer or an enemy of the state as she dog whistled to the extremists and nationalists.
Not so different from my own trajectory.
I was a mild Eurosceptic who remembered how flawed the pro-Euro argument had been, and reserved several doubts about EU probity (those unsigned-off accounts!), efficacy (those washed up politicos!), and politics (those poor Greeks!).
Like you, I started looking into it seriously only with the referendum approaching.
I realised - to my horror - that 90% of the Brexit platform was total bollocks.
I was then increasingly made to feel like an alien and an intruder by British politicians and media.
It ended with me leaving the country, albeit I have not totally renounced my “Britishness”.
Based on @Richard_Tyndall comments a few minutes up the page I am going to re-research retirement to France.
I went on the French interior ministry site last year as well as a couple of expat websites and found the contents very discouraging unless I had a work sponsor, so I gave up.
Based on @Richard_Tyndall comments a few minutes up the page I am going to re-research retirement to France.
I went on the French interior ministry site last year as well as a couple of expat websites and found the contents very discouraging unless I had a work sponsor, so I gave up.
I shall give it another go.
Please let us know as it remains my intention to split retirement between UK/France and NZ.
Years and years ago I read J G Farrell's "Troubles". A great novel, if you haven't read it. And David Thomson's Woodbrook - a wonderful memoir of his time as a tutor to an Anglo-Irish family in the 1930's.
Troubles is set in Ireland just after WW1. There are various scenes set in an orangery filled with plants and I thought then how wonderful it would be to have something similar. If I did I think I would spend all my time in there.
Woodbrook describes a wonderful bathroom with a sunken bath. And I have finally got one - with stepped shelves to the side of it leading up to a window onto the back garden (the house is on a hill so there are multiple levels everywhere which we've tried to use to dramatic effect). And yes I have ferns and other plants on those shelves. Utterly gorgeous!
By then they will almost certainly own property themselves given the age of first property ownership is 39 and be starting to look to retirement
HYUFD I am telling you as a young person, it's not going to happen.
I own a flat, I hate the Tories for what they have done to us. You are finished.
Not many young people own a flat though
Yes because of our failure of economic policy.
Housing crash now, fuck the elderly.
If there is a housing crash the young will be rogered big time, .
Exactly! The elderly with paid off mortgages will simply have less to pass on to their younger heirs. The young who have mortgages will be totally screwed!
Most people with mortgages will be screwed - including many landlords.
Most young people haven't got mortgages. Inheriting half as much isn't any kind of a problem if they were going to buy a house with it and houses have halved in value.
I'm with Horse. Bring on the housing market crash. (I don't share his attitude towards the elderly, though.)
Those figures for ages 55-64 are remarkably low?
As most of them have already bought with a mortgage by that age
Clearly not, based on that graph.
No clearly, as DJ14 realises now it is cumulative.
So in fact 52% of those aged 35-44 have bought a property with a mortgage, not 29%
No, I don't think it's even that. It's a terrible chart that's for sure.
What I think it's showing is the percentage of a) outright owners and b) owners with a mortgages, who fall in each age group. Hence the percentages for each series add up to 100.
So, for example, 61.6% of people who own outright are 65 and over. And 29.3% of mortgage holders are in the age group 35 to 44.
It says nothing about what percentage of a given age group own a house outright, or with a mortgage.
It's certainly not saying that 52% of those aged 35-44 have bought a property with a mortgage.
My wife routinely spends Sunday morning swearing at an iPad and mangling her shopping, I do wonder what proportion of it is faster than going out and finding and picking up the goods from a smaller selection. It's not 100% for sure.
And an absolute pet hate is the digital transformation of car parking. Nearly infinite different apps, so the parking, sorry, land speculation, company doesn't have to put or keep a working pay machine. Almost invariably slower and less reliable than a bank card where the option exists, or even tbh coins a lot of the time. Encountered a couple of times last summer a while car park gone belly up, both from dodgy online paying and from unmaintained machines, and bewildered tourists wandering from machine to machine trying to pay or get reception.
You don’t really feel Brexit directly until you travel in Europe. Most of the rest of the time it’s just a thing, out there in the media and in the trade stats.
I’ve just had my periodic reminder: the mini-indignity, the self imposed micro-aggression, of the passport control experience arriving in Copenhagen.
First the two queues, one empty the other full and slow moving. That very visible record of the 2016 vote.
Then the polite but firm interrogation: why am I here, what is my business, how long am I staying?
Finally the increasingly difficult search for spare pages to put that pointless stamp on. What happens when I run out of pages? Do I then need to get a second, black passport?
I leave the airport feeling a foreigner in a way I never did before Brexit. I suppose for my children’s generation this will just seem normal.
Sorry but I just don't get this. I probably travelled more around Europe and the rest of the world than the vast majority of people on here - Leon and a few others accepted. Certainly I have been back and forth around both EU and non EU countries continuously for the last 35 years. As far as queues go I see no difference. Arriving at CDG or Schipol or Copenhagen was always a pain with long, long queues because we weren't in Schengen. I have seen no change at all in that since Brexit. Yes you now have to answer questions and yes you get a stamp but so what? These ARE foreign countries so claiming you didn't feel like a foreigner before and do now is just deluded.
It is also wildly parochial. This is how the other 93% of the world works.
There are legitimate arguments made by Remainers about Brexit. Passport control and queues aren't one of them.
Of course you wouldn’t get it and I wouldn’t expect you to. You voted Brexit. You saw the EU as a bunch of foreign countries, and the relationship as transactional.
I voted remain, I saw Europe as my country, and the relationship as something other than transactional. The passport control process is the moment that visceral loss is most felt.
In that case I pity you. I genuinely consider that to be a deluded attitude.
I'm fascinated by it: I think 90% of the "I've always felt european" people are show offs or liars, but I know TimS isn't. So can you explain it to us? Did you always feel like this? Come to feel that way? Why european and not "Citizen of the world" etc?
I was born with dual citizenship - just the pure luck of the birth lottery. I was raised in a time when joining the EEC (as the EU-to-be was back then) was viewed as a good thing. As I grew up the EU was just something that was there and I appreciated the ease of travel and the ease at which I could do work for companies in Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid.
Then Brexit happened and to my own surprise, I felt the loss far more keenly than I expected. But I was lucky enough to have that other passport.
My UK one expires this year. I may not bother renewing it.
This must be a different Beverley to the "BETTER OFF OUT!" one who used to inhabit this board.
In a way it is. I was lazy enough pre-referendum not to dig too deeply into the generally accepted narratives of EU corruption that was part of a lot of the political discourse and also appeared over much of the press, and many of the ideas put forward by the likes of Hannan seemed plausible enough on the surface. So being more on the BOO side of the argument was really neither here nor there because what did it matter?
When the referendum loomed I decided that I needed to look into things a bit more because maybe it did matter and it did not take too long to found out that most of the BOO stuff was utter cr*p. SO I voted Remain.
Then the vilification started of those who expressed any kind of anger or disbelief about the result and I mean more than me. Anyone who criticised Leave was apparently fair game.
I found the rhetoric of the Brexiteers, especially the ERG and their followers, both repulsive and xenophobic. Within days of the vote some of the more vociferous PBers were calling me a traitor for saying Brexit was wrong and the "You lost, suck it up" phase began.
Then the Brexit lies began to unwind, people who had voted leave to "give the govt a kicking" started the first Bregret phase. There was the "Undo Brexit petition" once it became obvious how much of Brexit was marketed on outright lies, deceptions and intolerance of foreigners (esp. Turks).
It was a shambles, A great big undignified mess predicated on untruths and fantasies. It made me ashamed that my own country could be brought so low so easily. The UK went from a leading country to having the politics of a banana republic in just a few years.
Having a dual nationality, it was easy for the whole mess to push me away from Britishness more and more as time went on. Theresa May's speech was final straw for me when she made it that you were either a Brexiteer or an enemy of the state as she dog whistled to the extremists and nationalists.
Not so different from my own trajectory.
I was a mild Eurosceptic who remembered how flawed the pro-Euro argument had been, and reserved several doubts about EU probity (those unsigned-off accounts!), efficacy (those washed up politicos!), and politics (those poor Greeks!).
Like you, I started looking into it seriously only with the referendum approaching.
I realised - to my horror - that 90% of the Brexit platform was total bollocks.
I was then increasingly made to feel like an alien and an intruder by British politicians and media.
It ended with me leaving the country, albeit I have not totally renunciated by “Britishness.
I voted remain despite huge reservations about the EU and the direction of travel. I thought it would be better for the economy and that seems to have been proven by the last few years. However, naively I assumed free trade deals with Europe would mean unhindered trade. More fool me. I hope that sensible heads will get the majory of the friction removed with the passage of time.
Based on @Richard_Tyndall comments a few minutes up the page I am going to re-research retirement to France.
I went on the French interior ministry site last year as well as a couple of expat websites and found the contents very discouraging unless I had a work sponsor, so I gave up.
I shall give it another go.
Surprisingly, videos on YouTube can be very good at that sort of thing. There’s one I found by an Italian lawyer that explained it all for Italy, which was discouraging, but then any contact with the law or authorities or bureaucracy in Italy tends to be that way. So there’s more advice on YouTube than how to dice an onion, build a brick wall or fold a fitted sheet.
Comments
Well, the high speed ones, anyway. Although even most of their local trains seem more reliable than ours.
Anyway after the disappointment of Brexit decided to double down on the opportunities afforded here in Blighty and planted a vineyard in Kent.
I’ve seen you posting about vineyards before and wondered where in the U.K. you were doing it. How long till first harvest? (If not already happened.)
Sorry Stodge but 40 seats ended the Liberals in 1924. The End as a governing party.
Now, if the Tories dropped to 40 seats and subsequently carried on as an electoral irrelevance that's fine by me.
*PS The LDs are not the Liberal Party.
You might have said they have more of them, which is true.
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1620467074228260865?s=20&t=L7ELFuB0XSP1Ct-MpFTcGA
https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1618292626339373056?s=20&t=L7ELFuB0XSP1Ct-MpFTcGA
https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/historical
I often wonder if things had been different had he won the 2016 leadership contest.
I’ve been looking into trains to Morocco from London. It’s surprisingly easy: Paris on Eurostar, TGV to Madrid, train to Algeciras or Tarifa, ferry, then train via Casablanca to most cities in Morocco. Around 2 and a half days.
And as I have said many times before, for me Brexit is just the first vital step along the road to far more fundamental reform of our democracy.
They may learn a bit in school, and all the roadsigns are now bilingual, but Welsh as a first primary language is very much in the minority.
Otherwise Australia, Canada and NZ and the UK wouldn't be different countries.
Actually, come to think of it, I feel closer affinities with all of those compared to European countries.
Particularly France - always struck by how different that feels when you cross the channel and enter the pas de calais. And it's only 20 miles away.
Pembrokeshire will be Transnistria.
It also helps to make the Welsh Brexit vote somehow even sillier and sadder, to me, as it's one of the regions that's done even worse since Brexit, exactly as predicted.
I could mention how, despite not planting any spring bulbs last autumn (as I was travelling) lots of the bulbs - including tulips planted the previous year - are now coming up, which is very pleasing. I shall post pictures when they flower.
Also a definite hint of spring in the air.
Plus I have 93 houseplants. Have I mentioned my passion for houseplants before? No. Well, now you know. Every home should have some. I am particularly delighted by the strelitzias which are flourishing in a corner of the living room. My jungle corner where I sit and stare at the sea and sky.
If the Tories lurch to the right the LDs could usurp them in the centre.
Even though I am not an embittered remainer, it still makes me upset, having to be asked what I am doing and when I am leaving. But the thing is this, it is nostalgia for the past, for the years of borders being an insignificant anachronism, a situation that just doesn't exist anymore. Looking at the situation now, and seeing all the problems that have arisen through uncontrolled immigration across Europe; I am actually pretty glad that these countries are trying to man their borders.
(Your cushion doesn’t match well with your sofa)
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/driving-in-the-eu
The most annoying thing is the EU driving kit, headlight dippers and gilet jaune for France, but we needed that before anyway.
The chart is from here:
https://www.uswitch.com/mortgages/mortgage-statistics/
Edit: Oops. They have split people with mortgages and owner occupiers by age group, rather than the other way round. Stupid way to do it, but I should have noticed.
On today's topic of passport queues: for the Tarifa ferry, Morocco-bound, the passport control is on the boat. You queue up immediately upon boarding, and board early, or you'll be in the queue all crossing and won't get to enjoy it. In the Spain-bound direction, the passport control is prior to boarding, for obvious reasons. Stay at the authentic old Hotel Continental within staggering distance of the port.
(The medinas and souks of Morocco will make a man out of any nervous traveller: touts and beggars will happily stick their arm around your shoulder and follow you around until they get what they want or are agressively removed.)
Perhaps what we all need to do is simply acknowledge those differences. It’s not a question of pride or pity.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hillsborough-disaster-police-chiefs-apologise-and-promise-change-g6xl8ksjl
"Police leaders have apologised for “profound failures” during and after the Hillsborough disaster as they announce an updated code of ethics requiring officers to show professionalism and “ethical decision-making”.
Exhibit 2
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/met-asks-officers-with-misconduct-records-to-come-back-pt0pwts6q
"The Metropolitan Police force has asked hundreds of retired officers with histories of misconduct records to re-apply for jobs in an effort to boost numbers.
More than 250 officers who were disciplined at misconduct proceedings during their career have received letters inviting them to return because of their “valuable skills and experience”.
Hmm ....
I think I will be writing headers about the police for some time to come.
And that's when they turned up at all.
I did see a rural French station master come out of his office to take a massive slash on the platform though before going back to work, which I thought was very French.
Mrs Flatlander got a Swiss Cheese Plant for her 13th birthday. That was, er, some time ago, and it now occupies a significant proportion of my living room. It attacks guests frequently, grumbling in the corner like the Aspidistra from the Adventure Game (anyone remember that?).
I don't mind that so much, or the cacti, some of which are now approaching football size, but whatever you do, don't have money plants. They are a menace.
The problem is we can never bring ourselves to send them to the compost heap in the sky.
On the spring front, I saw some daffs out at the weekend here, and not the exotic ones that flower early. Will be time to go out hunting the native ones soon.
Sure I feel more European than American, but that is highly qualified, and rests essentially on my understanding of Britain as part of Europe.
I certainly feel closer to Americans than the French.
Who knows really if my preferences are even transitive.
The point is that EU membership makes me (a British passport holder) richer and freer, also my children. It’s that simple. I don’t need to suddenly pretend to an affinity with, say, Slovenes, that I don’t have.
Gove is a thinker, and then he delivers.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/01/31/heroin-now-legal-vancouver-addicts-celebrating/
Very brave.
The photo is cropped. The blue is not a cushion but a wool throw which I had placed there prior to moving it to the room where it belongs.
As you will see not only do my cushions match the sofa, but my cat does too!
Though we did have one panicked moment when our Belgian train departed and we trundled past our own car on the back of another train. It seems they used to meet up somewhere in the dead of night and swap all the carriages about, no idea why.
When the referendum loomed I decided that I needed to look into things a bit more because maybe it did matter and it did not take too long to found out that most of the BOO stuff was utter cr*p. SO I voted Remain.
Then the vilification started of those who expressed any kind of anger or disbelief about the result and I mean more than me. Anyone who criticised Leave was apparently fair game.
I found the rhetoric of the Brexiteers, especially the ERG and their followers, both repulsive and xenophobic. Within days of the vote some of the more vociferous PBers were calling me a traitor for saying Brexit was wrong and the "You lost, suck it up" phase began.
Then the Brexit lies began to unwind, people who had voted leave to "give the govt a kicking" started the first Bregret phase. There was the "Undo Brexit petition" once it became obvious how much of Brexit was marketed on outright lies, deceptions and intolerance of foreigners (esp. Turks).
It was a shambles, A great big undignified mess predicated on untruths and fantasies. It made me ashamed that my own country could be brought so low so easily. The UK went from a leading country to having the politics of a banana republic in just a few years.
Having a dual nationality, it was easy for the whole mess to push me away from Britishness more and more as time went on. Theresa May's speech was final straw for me when she made it that you were either a Brexiteer or an enemy of the state as she dog whistled to the extremists and nationalists.
So in fact 52% of those aged 35-44 have bought a property with a mortgage, not 29%
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/chatgpt-ai-economy-automation-jobs/672767/
I am British and will be staying here, but I do like my country less than I did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kywWajfr1oo (e.g. 9:30 on)
Introducing Rose AI
https://twitter.com/colecallinan/status/1620476857232797697
I was a mild Eurosceptic who remembered how flawed the pro-Euro argument had been, and reserved several doubts about EU probity (those unsigned-off accounts!), efficacy (those washed up politicos!), and politics (those poor Greeks!).
Like you, I started looking into it seriously only with the referendum approaching.
I realised - to my horror - that 90% of the Brexit platform was total bollocks.
I was then increasingly made to feel like an alien and an intruder by British politicians and media.
It ended with me leaving the country, albeit I have not totally renounced my “Britishness”.
I went on the French interior ministry site last year as well as a couple of expat websites and found the contents very discouraging unless I had a work sponsor, so I gave up.
I shall give it another go.
Troubles is set in Ireland just after WW1. There are various scenes set in an orangery filled with plants and I thought then how wonderful it would be to have something similar. If I did I think I would spend all my time in there.
Woodbrook describes a wonderful bathroom with a sunken bath. And I have finally got one - with stepped shelves to the side of it leading up to a window onto the back garden (the house is on a hill so there are multiple levels everywhere which we've tried to use to dramatic effect). And yes I have ferns and other plants on those shelves. Utterly gorgeous!
Both books are well worth reading BTW.
What I think it's showing is the percentage of a) outright owners and b) owners with a mortgages, who fall in each age group. Hence the percentages for each series add up to 100.
So, for example, 61.6% of people who own outright are 65 and over. And 29.3% of mortgage holders are in the age group 35 to 44.
It says nothing about what percentage of a given age group own a house outright, or with a mortgage.
It's certainly not saying that 52% of those aged 35-44 have bought a property with a mortgage.
Shadow work. A real productivity killer or not?
My wife routinely spends Sunday morning swearing at an iPad and mangling her shopping, I do wonder what proportion of it is faster than going out and finding and picking up the goods from a smaller selection. It's not 100% for sure.
And an absolute pet hate is the digital transformation of car parking. Nearly infinite different apps, so the parking, sorry, land speculation, company doesn't have to put or keep a working pay machine. Almost invariably slower and less reliable than a bank card where the option exists, or even tbh coins a lot of the time. Encountered a couple of times last summer a while car park gone belly up, both from dodgy online paying and from unmaintained machines, and bewildered tourists wandering from machine to machine trying to pay or get reception.
However, naively I assumed free trade deals with Europe would mean unhindered trade. More fool me. I hope that sensible heads will get the majory of the friction removed with the passage of time.