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Starmer now a 77% betting chance of being PM after the election – politicalbetting.com

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    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    DJ41a said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    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.)

    image
    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%
    A cursory look at the graph shows that it is showing the proportion of homeowners broken down by age. It does not in any way attempt to show what proportion of a given age are homeowners or have mortgages.
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    Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 7,981

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
  • Options
    Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 27,033
    edited January 2023
    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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.
    Europe is not a country. I'm surprised that even the most ardent Remain supporters think of it in that way.
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    Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 25,599

    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.

    Gove is a thinker, and then he delivers.
    Thanks for the answer - I would be interested to read more but definitelt don't take time doing it if you're busy!
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    GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,880
    “Shadow work” is a curse.

    It is profitable to one’s happiness to try to avoid it wherever possible, including the stupid “unexpected item in baggage area” machines.

    Weirdly it’s not such a big thing in the US.
    Supermarkets still employ fucking greeters.

    I am convinced that the US service sector is actually less efficient than the British one. This underlying inefficiency may be masked by economies of scale.
  • Options
    NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,372
    edited January 2023

    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'm one of the fan club. At Defra, Gove had a sensible shot at replacing the European CAP (which roughly speaking gives you a subsidy proportionate to the size of your farm) with a "public money for public goods" approach, subsidising farmers who do things that the Government welcomes (reduce pollution, rotate crops, improve welfare, etc.). He recognised animal sentience formally and put through an Act setting up an independent body to monitor whether the Government was respecting it. He had a serious attempt at bridging the gap between religious fundamentalists and NGOs disliking non-stun slaughter. He introduced a Bill to end live exports. He initiated work on a system of consumer-friendly labelling, and on phasing out the use of antiquated cages systems for hens and pigs.

    Basically, Defra is a minefield full of tricky issues and NGOs and farmers constantly nagging you. The normal Ministerial response is to roll up like a hedgehog and do nothing. Gove had a serious try at resolving some of the issues. Looking through that list you'll see a number of animal-friendly things, which is of course partly why I liked him. But I'd give him credit for stuff that has nothing to with animals and merely with the wider environment. Essentially, when he sees a knotty problem he tries to unravel it. It's not a common characteristic of Ministers in general.
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    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,231
    edited January 2023
    ydoethur said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    ydoethur said:

    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.
    😊.
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,845
    edited January 2023

    Cyclefree said:

    ydoethur said:

    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.
    A Cheese Plant in the wild. It must have been 100 metres of it up that trunk.



    (And an Eyelash Viper in the foreground, highly poisonous)
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    “Shadow work” is a curse.

    It is profitable to one’s happiness to try to avoid it wherever possible, including the stupid “unexpected item in baggage area” machines.

    Weirdly it’s not such a big thing in the US.
    Supermarkets still employ fucking greeters.

    I am convinced that the US service sector is actually less efficient than the British one. This underlying inefficiency may be masked by economies of scale.

    How much do you have to tip the greeter?
  • Options
    kjhkjh Posts: 10,688

    kjh said:

    Driver said:

    kjh said:

    Driver said:

    TimS said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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:

    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.
    His plan was to tour for 2 years and sold his house on retiring. He had to come home. After 90 days he has to come home park up for 90 days and then start again from scratch.

    If you have a holiday home you have to restrict your travel to 90 days on a rolling basis. If you even cut it fine and your plane is delayed it buggers you up so you really haven't got the full 90 days as that is too risky. Several I know have been caught out by that.

    Taking a dog abroad is a real pain now. There is no spontaneous trips anymore. It takes weeks of planning to take your dog in the car. No more popping on the ferry or in the tunnel.

    You try taking your dog abroad in your car without massive pre planning now.
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,867
    edited January 2023
    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    ydoethur said:

    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!

    Mrs P. put ours forward. It's certainly better than quite a few that actually are in the scheme in my (biased) opinion.

    But the bloody snob of a woman who came round to vet it (in November - we applied in April), who does not have a garden in the scheme herself but clearly knows the right people, said it did not have enough interest, and maybe we should put some more salvias in (which we don't like and which grow well on our heavy clay). She also hinted that they (she) preferred more 'character', like old rectories etc.

    When she left we were fuming and vowed not to bother again.

    PS Re-reading that it is rather negative. We just had a bad experience. I wish you every success with your ambition Cyclefree
  • Options
    GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,880

    “Shadow work” is a curse.

    It is profitable to one’s happiness to try to avoid it wherever possible, including the stupid “unexpected item in baggage area” machines.

    Weirdly it’s not such a big thing in the US.
    Supermarkets still employ fucking greeters.

    I am convinced that the US service sector is actually less efficient than the British one. This underlying inefficiency may be masked by economies of scale.

    How much do you have to tip the greeter?
    Nothing. Tipping is another curse, though.
  • Options
    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 36,005

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is
    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
    You might think differently, if Sinn Fein wins the next Irish election.
  • Options
    GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,880
    Sean_F said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is
    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
    You might think differently, if Sinn Fein wins the next Irish election.
    This is the kind of snide comment that has alienated a lot of people who elected to be part of something British.
  • Options
    glwglw Posts: 9,554
    Pro_Rata said:

    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.

    The government should simply make one standard app or protocol mandatory. It would be a vote winner too, for any government minister reading this you can have the idea for free. p.s. Make sure chargers standards and payments are similarly simple, before that becomes any more of a mess.
  • Options
    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,231
    Foxy said:

    Cyclefree said:

    ydoethur said:

    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.
    A Cheese Plant in the wild. It must have been 100 metres of it up that trunk.



    (And an Eyelash Viper in the foreground, highly poisonous)
    That looks like a philodendron to me rather than a cheese plant. But there are lots of varieties of both. I have just acquired a Philodendron Prince of Orange and a philodendron scandens - the latter is trailing unlike the former.
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,512
    edited January 2023
    kjh said:

    kjh said:

    Driver said:

    kjh said:

    Driver said:

    TimS said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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:

    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.
    His plan was to tour for 2 years and sold his house on retiring. He had to come home. After 90 days he has to come home park up for 90 days and then start again from scratch.

    If you have a holiday home you have to restrict your travel to 90 days on a rolling basis. If you even cut it fine and your plane is delayed it buggers you up so you really haven't got the full 90 days as that is too risky. Several I know have been caught out by that.

    Taking a dog abroad is a real pain now. There is no spontaneous trips anymore. It takes weeks of planning to take your dog in the car. No more popping on the ferry or in the tunnel.

    You try taking your dog abroad in your car without massive pre planning now.
    British owners are managing to get EU pet passports, as I have from Belgium, and while some countries led by France are trying to clamp down on this, others such as Spain, Germany and Ireland are more relaxed about it, and even in France people are still finding vets willing to oblige. Plus there’s the Northern Ireland loophole, since NI is still able to issue EU PPs, at least for the time being.

    Once you have a PP it’s like the old days for dog travel, until all the tapeworm spaces are filled.
  • Options
    Beibheirli_CBeibheirli_C Posts: 7,981

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
    I was talking to an Irishman about this, also recently relocated to New York. Some kind of CFO character.

    Now, he’s “proper” Irish, as in Dublin born and raised, as is his wife. Nevertheless he lived in London for many years.

    He is still very angry about Brexit and in talking to him I realise that he had come to think of himself as - if not British, exactly - having made a “home” there.

    Apart from anything else, Brexit torched a massive about of goodwill and soft power.
    Exactly :+1:
  • Options
    FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,298
    edited January 2023
    Pro_Rata said:

    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.

    Not to mention the scammer QR code trick. Yet another company / app, no idea what it is, oh QR code, scan, is it a legit app, don't know, well I have to pay as ANR when I entered and only got 5 mins to make a payment.....oh shit it was a scammer QR code, bank account drain incoming......
  • Options
    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,231
    edited January 2023

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    ydoethur said:

    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!

    Mrs P. put ours forward. It's certainly better than quite a few that actually are in the scheme in my (biased) opinion.

    But the bloody snob of a woman who came round to vet it (in November - we applied in April), who does not have a garden in the scheme herself but clearly knows the right people, said it did not have enough interest, and maybe we should put some more salvias in (which we don't like and which grow well on our heavy clay). She also hinted that they (she) preferred more 'character', like old rectories etc.

    When she left we were fuming and vowed not to bother again.

    PS Re-reading that it is rather negative. We just had a bad experience. I wish you every success with your ambition Cyclefree
    I've heard similar stories too. They should have smaller gardens because often for people with small outside spaces it is nice to see what others have done. And, frankly, there are more people with small gardens than people with big gardens and rectories.

    Fortunately we have a local Village Committee and a website for the area so there is nothing to stop me opening the garden to locals - and any passing PB'ers, of course.

    And thank you for the good wishes. There is quite a way to go. I have drawn the plan and a couple of weeks ago our very large ash - which sadly had die-back - was taken down. The area under it is where my French-style potager will go - with borders of espaliered pears. The pears - when ripe - will be eaten by me in my sunken bath.
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,867
    Foxy said:

    Cyclefree said:

    ydoethur said:

    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.
    A Cheese Plant in the wild. It must have been 100 metres of it up that trunk.



    (And an Eyelash Viper in the foreground, highly poisonous)
    "Oh, look at that."
    "What?"
    "A lovely Swiss cheese plant - there - just behind the highly poisonous viper."


    I am not sure I'd have noticed the plant tbh.
  • Options
    geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,177
    Just finished the three BBC programmes about Putin on the iPlayer – gripping, terrifying and grisly, even though it's all been known about by anyone following developments. Wallace and Johnson come out of it well (I'm not trying to puff them up, believe me or not).
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,867
    Foxy said:

    Cyclefree said:

    ydoethur said:

    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.
    A Cheese Plant in the wild. It must have been 100 metres of it up that trunk.



    (And an Eyelash Viper in the foreground, highly poisonous)
    "Oh, look at that."
    "What?"
    "A lovely Swiss cheese plant - there - just behind the highly poisonous viper."


    I am not sure I'd have noticed the plant tbh.
  • Options
    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,295
    Sean_F said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is
    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
    You might think differently, if Sinn Fein wins the next Irish election.
    The Anglophobia in Ireland was never far under the surface, even pre Brexit. I think most English visitors to Ireland are shocked by how much we are all hated there. It’s a product of our poor history education that makes us think that we have ever been a big friendly bunch of islands, but (justifiably) they really really loath us.
  • Options
    maxhmaxh Posts: 836
    I have just got to the end of a 3 month long conversation with a friend in Serbia (all via voice notes, its very twee). He is adamant that what he calls the 'corporate press' and others call the 'mainstream media' just cannot be trusted any more, especially after the mainstream narrative around covid and the war in Ukraine (I vehemently disagree with him, fwiw).

    The conversation with him has really brought home to me how much I value pb - and I have referred to it as a place that balances really well the need for freedom of speech but also some form of quality control - just tonight the breadth of opinions being debated and the freedom of speech in evidence on all sides is invaluable imo.

    Thanks @MikeSmithson, @rcs1000 and all of you.
  • Options
    Pro_Rata said:

    https://www.ft.com/content/c2913c55-b9f5-44fa-b6dc-7cd7a2659925

    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.

    She is right. If I am spending two hours on the phone arguing with the bank about a routine issue, that is two hours lost from work. Multiply that across providers.

    The problem - as with a lot of these things - actually goes back to Reagan and Thatcher. By building up the idea that businesses will 'do the right thing' and also that a 'rational' human will make infinite calculations as to whether it is worthwhile for her / him to use the service, they completely underestimated the desire of firms to transfer as many costs as they could over to the consumer.
  • Options
    glwglw Posts: 9,554

    Not to mention the scammer QR code trick. Yet another company / app, no idea what it is, oh QR code, scan, is it a legit app, don't know, well I have to pay as ANR when I entered and only got 5 mins to make a payment.....oh shit it was a scammer QR code, bank account drain incoming......

    It's beyond f*cking stupid the way it works. All you need to know is "where are you?" then it ought to be dead easy to get the correct costs and time limits which can be delivered to any compliant app and deliver a valid payment in return.
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,845

    Foxy said:

    Cyclefree said:

    ydoethur said:

    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.
    A Cheese Plant in the wild. It must have been 100 metres of it up that trunk.



    (And an Eyelash Viper in the foreground, highly poisonous)
    "Oh, look at that."
    "What?"
    "A lovely Swiss cheese plant - there - just behind the highly poisonous viper."


    I am not sure I'd have noticed the plant tbh.
    I was hiking in Costa Rica, and everyone had walked straight past the Eyelash Viper, when the tail end of our party spotted it and called us back.

    It is far easier to see the plants!
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,185
    DougSeal said:

    Sean_F said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is
    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
    You might think differently, if Sinn Fein wins the next Irish election.
    The Anglophobia in Ireland was never far under the surface, even pre Brexit. I think most English visitors to Ireland are shocked by how much we are all hated there. It’s a product of our poor history education that makes us think that we have ever been a big friendly bunch of islands, but (justifiably) they really really loath us.
    I have been to Ireland and have never got or seen any hatred, apart from a bit of disrespectful writing on a Dublin toilet wall after the Queen died
  • Options
    geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,177
    BBC reporting the IMF projection as if it were fact rather than conjecture.
  • Options
    Sean_FSean_F Posts: 36,005

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is





    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.

    Sean_F said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is
    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
    You might think differently, if Sinn Fein wins the next Irish election.
    This is the kind of snide comment that has alienated a lot of people who elected to be part of something British.
    Maybe you think a Sinn Fein victory would be a good thing.

    I don’t.

  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,185

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    DJ41a said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    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.)

    image
    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.
    It is once you add the 22% of 25 to 34s and 1% of 16-24s who have also bought a property with a mortgage
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,867
    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    Cyclefree said:

    ydoethur said:

    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!

    Mrs P. put ours forward. It's certainly better than quite a few that actually are in the scheme in my (biased) opinion.

    But the bloody snob of a woman who came round to vet it (in November - we applied in April), who does not have a garden in the scheme herself but clearly knows the right people, said it did not have enough interest, and maybe we should put some more salvias in (which we don't like and which grow well on our heavy clay). She also hinted that they (she) preferred more 'character', like old rectories etc.

    When she left we were fuming and vowed not to bother again.

    PS Re-reading that it is rather negative. We just had a bad experience. I wish you every success with your ambition Cyclefree
    I've heard similar stories too. They should have smaller gardens because often for people with small outside spaces it is nice to see what others have done. And, frankly, there are more people with small gardens than people with big gardens and rectories.

    Fortunately we have a local Village Committee and a website for the area so there is nothing to stop me opening the garden to locals - and any passing PB'ers, of course.

    And thank you for the good wishes. There is quite a way to go. I have drawn the plan and a couple of weeks ago our very large ash - which sadly had die-back - was taken down. The area under it is where my French-style potager will go - with borders of espaliered pears. The pears - when ripe - will be eaten by me in my sunken bath.
    Our garden is actually 3/4 of an acre so not exactly small and it has an enormous number and variety of plants. But it is quite contemporary, which I think was the issue. (And not enough salvias!)

    Sorry to hear about your ash, our neighbour's had to come down a few weeks ago. It's very sad to see them go the same way as elms did when I was young.

    We do a local village open gardens which is great fun.

    Good luck - you'll have Monty visiting in no time!
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,185
    Sean_F said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is





    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.

    Sean_F said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is
    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
    You might think differently, if Sinn Fein wins the next Irish election.
    This is the kind of snide comment that has alienated a lot of people who elected to be part of something British.
    Maybe you think a Sinn Fein victory would be a good thing.

    I don’t.

    Sinn Fein were anti EEC, they only became pro EU recently

    https://irishelectionliterature.com/2020/06/17/say-no-to-the-sell-out-vote-no-to-the-eec-sinn-fein-leaflet-from-the-1972-referendum-on-ireland-joining-the-eec/
  • Options
    kjhkjh Posts: 10,688
    IanB2 said:

    kjh said:

    kjh said:

    Driver said:

    kjh said:

    Driver said:

    TimS said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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:

    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.
    His plan was to tour for 2 years and sold his house on retiring. He had to come home. After 90 days he has to come home park up for 90 days and then start again from scratch.

    If you have a holiday home you have to restrict your travel to 90 days on a rolling basis. If you even cut it fine and your plane is delayed it buggers you up so you really haven't got the full 90 days as that is too risky. Several I know have been caught out by that.

    Taking a dog abroad is a real pain now. There is no spontaneous trips anymore. It takes weeks of planning to take your dog in the car. No more popping on the ferry or in the tunnel.

    You try taking your dog abroad in your car without massive pre planning now.
    British owners are managing to get EU pet passports, as I have from Belgium, and while some countries led by France are trying to clamp down on this, others such as Spain, Germany and Ireland are more relaxed about it, and even in France people are still finding vets willing to oblige. Plus there’s the Northern Ireland loophole, since NI is still able to issue EU PPs, at least for the time being.

    Once you have a PP it’s like the old days for dog travel, until all the tapeworm spaces are filled.
    Yes we discussed this sometime ago when you advised me for which I was very grateful. 2 of us with 3 dogs wanted to make a short trip to look at a property in France. It cost significantly more to take each dog than it did for us to travel because of the paperwork which is bonkers, but that was irrelevant because we couldn't get the vet appointment anyway because of the shortage of those qualified and we weren't willing to risk getting the paperwork sorted at the port.
  • Options
    GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,880
    edited January 2023
    Sean_F said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is





    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.

    Sean_F said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is
    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
    You might think differently, if Sinn Fein wins the next Irish election.
    This is the kind of snide comment that has alienated a lot of people who elected to be part of something British.
    Maybe you think a Sinn Fein victory would be a good thing.

    I don’t.

    Oh I don’t, but in the context of the conversation your remark come across as quite offensive.

    Perhaps you don’t realise the way you come across. Perhaps Brexiters really don’t realise how narrow-minded they appear.
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,845
    geoffw said:

    Just finished the three BBC programmes about Putin on the iPlayer – gripping, terrifying and grisly, even though it's all been known about by anyone following developments. Wallace and Johnson come out of it well (I'm not trying to puff them up, believe me or not).

    Yes, very good.

    I have just been watching "Emily Atack: Asking for it?" On BBC2.

    Very sobering and depressing how awful is the abuse she (and others) have to put up with.
  • Options
    HYUFD said:
    The Conservative party was pro EEC, it only became anti EU recently.
  • Options
    glwglw Posts: 9,554
    geoffw said:

    BBC reporting the IMF projection as if it were fact rather than conjecture.

    To be fair when I first heard the report this morning the BBC did rather undermine it by saying "it's mainly negative because the IMF uses Bank of England reports which are expected to be revised upwards shortly".
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,859
    Cyclefree said:

    Exhibit 1

    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.

    Utterly absurd.
    (Not your headers.)
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,845
    geoffw said:

    BBC reporting the IMF projection as if it were fact rather than conjecture.

    In years pre Covid the IMF forecasts published for the UK in 2017 and 2018 were accurate within 0.1% of the actual figure.

    We are coming out of 3 very unusual years with many unexpected events, but prior to that the IMF forecasts seemed pretty accurate.
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,867
    edited January 2023
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    DJ41a said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    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.)

    image
    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.
    It is once you add the 22% of 25 to 34s and 1% of 16-24s who have also bought a property with a mortgage
    Good God no it is not saying that! Please read my post properly.

    By your logic if the chart says "52% of those aged 35-44 have bought a property with a mortgage" then it also says:

    81.9% of those aged 45-54 have bought a property with a mortgage, and
    95.6% of those aged 55-64 have bought a property with a mortgage, and
    100% of those over 65 have bought a property with a mortgage.
    (And also 100% of those over 65 own a property without a mortgage.)

    You have misunderstood the chart. Feel free to admit you are wr*ng, it's not hard ;-)

    image
  • Options
    kamskikamski Posts: 4,331
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    DJ41a said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    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.)

    image
    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.
    It is once you add the 22% of 25 to 34s and 1% of 16-24s who have also bought a property with a mortgage
    So 100% of people 65+ own a house outright? Fantastic news!
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,185
    edited January 2023

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    DJ41a said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    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.)

    image
    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.
    It is once you add the 22% of 25 to 34s and 1% of 16-24s who have also bought a property with a mortgage
    Good God no it is not saying that!

    Please read my post properly.

    By your logic if the chart says "52% of those aged 35-44 have bought a property with a mortgage" then it also says:

    81.9% of those aged 45-54 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    95.6% of those aged 55-64 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    100% of those over 65 have bought a property with a mortgage.

    (And also 100% of those over 65 own a property without a mortgage.)

    You have misunderstood the chart. Feel free to admit you are wr*ng, it's not hard ;-)

    image
    Well it certainly doesn't say only 29% of 35-44s have a property with a mortgage either or only 61% of over 65s are owner occupiers.

  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,376
    Foxy said:

    geoffw said:

    Just finished the three BBC programmes about Putin on the iPlayer – gripping, terrifying and grisly, even though it's all been known about by anyone following developments. Wallace and Johnson come out of it well (I'm not trying to puff them up, believe me or not).

    Yes, very good.

    I have just been watching "Emily Atack: Asking for it?" On BBC2.

    Very sobering and depressing how awful is the abuse she (and others) have to put up with.
    It’s refreshing that on PB things are never that bad. Online abuse is disgusting and pathetic at the same time. Ultimately the ability to make hateful comments anonymously is the problem. Most people wouldn’t behave aggressively and rudely in person, but online, behind the anonymous ID it seems to be common.
  • Options
    WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,503
    edited January 2023
    Ireland and Britain are almost intimately historically connected, whether anyone on either side likes it or not. Joyce also had trouble resolving this contradiction, and often wrote in English about this quandary .

    As I mentioned a few weeks back, I remember reading that were up to 12 million people of partly Irish descent, in England alone. There must be another couple of million in Scotland.
  • Options
    LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 15,451

    Sean_F said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is
    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
    You might think differently, if Sinn Fein wins the next Irish election.
    This is the kind of snide comment that has alienated a lot of people who elected to be part of something British.
    It's not snide. It's realistic about the risk that a Sinn Fein government poses, though I don't think there's so much of an "if" about it. I think people are sick enough of the "status quo parties" that they will give Mary-Lou a go. Half of the Irish news these days is about one government compensation scheme or another because of negligence going back decades.

    The thing that worries me is the minor Sinn Fein politicians who still get forced out of the party for daring to disagree with Mary-Lou, or just because they don't fit. The culture within Sinn Fein is still very hostile to open democratic politics. They made too many adjustments to dealing with fighting a war for so long, and it will be a big test to see what wins out when they are in power.
  • Options

    Foxy said:

    geoffw said:

    Just finished the three BBC programmes about Putin on the iPlayer – gripping, terrifying and grisly, even though it's all been known about by anyone following developments. Wallace and Johnson come out of it well (I'm not trying to puff them up, believe me or not).

    Yes, very good.

    I have just been watching "Emily Atack: Asking for it?" On BBC2.

    Very sobering and depressing how awful is the abuse she (and others) have to put up with.
    It’s refreshing that on PB things are never that bad. Online abuse is disgusting and pathetic at the same time. Ultimately the ability to make hateful comments anonymously is the problem. Most people wouldn’t behave aggressively and rudely in person, but online, behind the anonymous ID it seems to be common.
    Try saying something about Scottish independence not being a great idea...

    (Ducks for cover)
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,867
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    DJ41a said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    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.)

    image
    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.
    It is once you add the 22% of 25 to 34s and 1% of 16-24s who have also bought a property with a mortgage
    Good God no it is not saying that!

    Please read my post properly.

    By your logic if the chart says "52% of those aged 35-44 have bought a property with a mortgage" then it also says:

    81.9% of those aged 45-54 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    95.6% of those aged 55-64 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    100% of those over 65 have bought a property with a mortgage.

    (And also 100% of those over 65 own a property without a mortgage.)

    You have misunderstood the chart. Feel free to admit you are wr*ng, it's not hard ;-)

    image
    Well it certainly doesn't say only 29% of 35-44s have a property with a mortgage either or only 61% of over 65s are owner occupiers.

    You simply can't bring yourself to admit you were wrong, can you?
  • Options
    CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,793

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
    Apart from anything else, Brexit torched a massive about of goodwill and soft power.
    Maybe not.....



    https://brandfinance.com/press-releases/global-soft-power-index-2022-usa-bounces-back-better-to-top-of-nation-brand-ranking#:~:text=“The composition of the Global,Kingdom, Germany, and China.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,185
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    DJ41a said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    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.)

    image
    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.
    It is once you add the 22% of 25 to 34s and 1% of 16-24s who have also bought a property with a mortgage
    Good God no it is not saying that!

    Please read my post properly.

    By your logic if the chart says "52% of those aged 35-44 have bought a property with a mortgage" then it also says:

    81.9% of those aged 45-54 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    95.6% of those aged 55-64 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    100% of those over 65 have bought a property with a mortgage.

    (And also 100% of those over 65 own a property without a mortgage.)

    You have misunderstood the chart. Feel free to admit you are wr*ng, it's not hard ;-)

    image
    Well it certainly doesn't say only 29% of 35-44s have a property with a mortgage either or only 61% of over 65s are owner occupiers.

    In fact 79% of households over 65 are owner occupiers

    https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9239/
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,376
    Foxy said:

    geoffw said:

    BBC reporting the IMF projection as if it were fact rather than conjecture.

    In years pre Covid the IMF forecasts published for the UK in 2017 and 2018 were accurate within 0.1% of the actual figure.

    We are coming out of 3 very unusual years with many unexpected events, but prior to that the IMF forecasts seemed pretty accurate.
    I want to believe that those behind the forecasts don’t have an agenda, or preconceptions, but sadly I suspect they do. The assessments are not done blind. Most economists seem to be very down on the U.K. right now because they see Brexit as wrong. I think it may mean that where data is uncertain, or guesstimates need to be made, unfavourable assumptions are chosen.

    Time will tell. I still remember the triple dip that never was.

  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,376

    Foxy said:

    geoffw said:

    Just finished the three BBC programmes about Putin on the iPlayer – gripping, terrifying and grisly, even though it's all been known about by anyone following developments. Wallace and Johnson come out of it well (I'm not trying to puff them up, believe me or not).

    Yes, very good.

    I have just been watching "Emily Atack: Asking for it?" On BBC2.

    Very sobering and depressing how awful is the abuse she (and others) have to put up with.
    It’s refreshing that on PB things are never that bad. Online abuse is disgusting and pathetic at the same time. Ultimately the ability to make hateful comments anonymously is the problem. Most people wouldn’t behave aggressively and rudely in person, but online, behind the anonymous ID it seems to be common.
    Try saying something about Scottish independence not being a great idea...

    (Ducks for cover)
    Even then it’s mostly good ol’ malc, with his refreshing blend of vitriol and bile. You don’t get the feeling that he really means it.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,859
    glw said:

    Pro_Rata said:

    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.

    The government should simply make one standard app or protocol mandatory. It would be a vote winner too, for any government minister reading this you can have the idea for free. p.s. Make sure chargers standards and payments are similarly simple, before that becomes any more of a mess.
    A rationalisation is already underway, I think, without any such interference.
    In the meantime it is annoying.
  • Options

    Ireland and Britain are almost intimately historically connected, whether anyone on either side likes it or not. Joyce also had trouble resolving this contradiction, and often wrote in English about this quandary .

    As I mentioned a few weeks back, I remember reading that were up to 12 million people of partly Irish descent, in England alone. There must be another couple of million in Scotland.

    I am one of them. Irish Catholic on my maternal grandfathers side (from Cork). Southern Irish protestant on my paternal grandfather's side (from Carlow).
  • Options
    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,295

    Ireland and Britain are almost intimately historically connected, whether anyone on either side likes it or not. Joyce also had trouble resolving this contradiction, and often wrote in English about the quandary .

    As I mentioned a few weeks back, I remember reading that were up to 12 million people of partly Irish descent, in England alone. There must be another couple of million in Scotland.

    Virtually all of that history is negative. As I said up thread it’s a mighty shock to the historically challenged English to find out how much Irish people hate them. There’s a lot of naïveté about how we are one big happy family whereas we’re they’re implacable historic enemy
  • Options

    Foxy said:

    geoffw said:

    BBC reporting the IMF projection as if it were fact rather than conjecture.

    In years pre Covid the IMF forecasts published for the UK in 2017 and 2018 were accurate within 0.1% of the actual figure.

    We are coming out of 3 very unusual years with many unexpected events, but prior to that the IMF forecasts seemed pretty accurate.
    I want to believe that those behind the forecasts don’t have an agenda, or preconceptions, but sadly I suspect they do. The assessments are not done blind. Most economists seem to be very down on the U.K. right now because they see Brexit as wrong. I think it may mean that where data is uncertain, or guesstimates need to be made, unfavourable assumptions are chosen.

    Time will tell. I still remember the triple dip that never was.

    I am reminded of all those dire warnings about a massive recession just as a result of voting for Brexit, let alone actually doing it. Whatever faith I had left in forecasters before that point disappeared when it became clear they had ramped up the doom and gloom exponentially.
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,845

    Foxy said:

    geoffw said:

    BBC reporting the IMF projection as if it were fact rather than conjecture.

    In years pre Covid the IMF forecasts published for the UK in 2017 and 2018 were accurate within 0.1% of the actual figure.

    We are coming out of 3 very unusual years with many unexpected events, but prior to that the IMF forecasts seemed pretty accurate.
    I want to believe that those behind the forecasts don’t have an agenda, or preconceptions, but sadly I suspect they do. The assessments are not done blind. Most economists seem to be very down on the U.K. right now because they see Brexit as wrong. I think it may mean that where data is uncertain, or guesstimates need to be made, unfavourable assumptions are chosen.

    Time will tell. I still remember the triple dip that never was.

    2017 and 2018 forecasts were after the Brexit vote, and as I pointed out, accurate to within 0.1%.

  • Options
    WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,503
    edited January 2023
    DougSeal said:

    Ireland and Britain are almost intimately historically connected, whether anyone on either side likes it or not. Joyce also had trouble resolving this contradiction, and often wrote in English about the quandary .

    As I mentioned a few weeks back, I remember reading that were up to 12 million people of partly Irish descent, in England alone. There must be another couple of million in Scotland.

    Virtually all of that history is negative. As I said up thread it’s a mighty shock to the historically challenged English to find out how much Irish people hate them. There’s a lot of naïveté about how we are one big happy family whereas we’re they’re implacable historic enemy
    I'm not sure that that makes us one big happy family. I think it certainly does mean that the ethnic interconnections are much greater than many people on either side might want to acknowledge, though.
  • Options

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    DJ41a said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    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.)

    image
    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.
    It is once you add the 22% of 25 to 34s and 1% of 16-24s who have also bought a property with a mortgage
    Good God no it is not saying that!

    Please read my post properly.

    By your logic if the chart says "52% of those aged 35-44 have bought a property with a mortgage" then it also says:

    81.9% of those aged 45-54 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    95.6% of those aged 55-64 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    100% of those over 65 have bought a property with a mortgage.

    (And also 100% of those over 65 own a property without a mortgage.)

    You have misunderstood the chart. Feel free to admit you are wr*ng, it's not hard ;-)

    image
    Well it certainly doesn't say only 29% of 35-44s have a property with a mortgage either or only 61% of over 65s are owner occupiers.

    You simply can't bring yourself to admit you were wrong, can you?
    I genuinely can't read that graph in any way that makes sense. Surely the lesson of this is that people should stop producing graphs that are so incoherent in what they are trying to show.
  • Options
    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,295

    DougSeal said:

    Ireland and Britain are almost intimately historically connected, whether anyone on either side likes it or not. Joyce also had trouble resolving this contradiction, and often wrote in English about the quandary .

    As I mentioned a few weeks back, I remember reading that were up to 12 million people of partly Irish descent, in England alone. There must be another couple of million in Scotland.

    Virtually all of that history is negative. As I said up thread it’s a mighty shock to the historically challenged English to find out how much Irish people hate them. There’s a lot of naïveté about how we are one big happy family whereas we’re they’re implacable historic enemy
    I'm not sure that that makes us one big happy family. It certainly means that the ethnic interconnections are much greater than many people on both sides might want to acknowledge, though.
    You miss the point. We’re not. They absolutely despise us all but we on this side of the Irish Sea are in constant denial about it.
  • Options
    WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,503
    edited January 2023
    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Ireland and Britain are almost intimately historically connected, whether anyone on either side likes it or not. Joyce also had trouble resolving this contradiction, and often wrote in English about the quandary .

    As I mentioned a few weeks back, I remember reading that were up to 12 million people of partly Irish descent, in England alone. There must be another couple of million in Scotland.

    Virtually all of that history is negative. As I said up thread it’s a mighty shock to the historically challenged English to find out how much Irish people hate them. There’s a lot of naïveté about how we are one big happy family whereas we’re they’re implacable historic enemy
    I'm not sure that that makes us one big happy family. It certainly means that the ethnic interconnections are much greater than many people on both sides might want to acknowledge, though.
    You miss the point. We’re not. They absolutely despise us all but we on this side of the Irish Sea are in constant denial about it.
    That's not been my experience in Ireland either, I must say. I'm also in fact yet another of the part-Irish myself, from a great-grandfather.

    I don't blame Ireland in general for hating Brexit, though.
  • Options
    Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 33,228
    ...
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,867
    edited January 2023

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    DJ41a said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    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.)

    image
    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.
    It is once you add the 22% of 25 to 34s and 1% of 16-24s who have also bought a property with a mortgage
    Good God no it is not saying that!

    Please read my post properly.

    By your logic if the chart says "52% of those aged 35-44 have bought a property with a mortgage" then it also says:

    81.9% of those aged 45-54 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    95.6% of those aged 55-64 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    100% of those over 65 have bought a property with a mortgage.

    (And also 100% of those over 65 own a property without a mortgage.)

    You have misunderstood the chart. Feel free to admit you are wr*ng, it's not hard ;-)

    image
    Well it certainly doesn't say only 29% of 35-44s have a property with a mortgage either or only 61% of over 65s are owner occupiers.

    You simply can't bring yourself to admit you were wrong, can you?
    I genuinely can't read that graph in any way that makes sense. Surely the lesson of this is that people should stop producing graphs that are so incoherent in what they are trying to show.
    It's a poor graph but not that difficult to work out if you look closely.

    You just have to realise that it's the percentages of all those buying with a mortgage who fall into in each age group, not the percentages of each age group who are buying with a mortgage. And the same for own outright.

    (It bamboozled HY of course but that's hardly a high bar.)
  • Options
    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,295

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Ireland and Britain are almost intimately historically connected, whether anyone on either side likes it or not. Joyce also had trouble resolving this contradiction, and often wrote in English about the quandary .

    As I mentioned a few weeks back, I remember reading that were up to 12 million people of partly Irish descent, in England alone. There must be another couple of million in Scotland.

    Virtually all of that history is negative. As I said up thread it’s a mighty shock to the historically challenged English to find out how much Irish people hate them. There’s a lot of naïveté about how we are one big happy family whereas we’re they’re implacable historic enemy
    I'm not sure that that makes us one big happy family. It certainly means that the ethnic interconnections are much greater than many people on both sides might want to acknowledge, though.
    You miss the point. We’re not. They absolutely despise us all but we on this side of the Irish Sea are in constant denial about it.
    That's not my experience in Ireland either, I must say. I'm also in fact yet another of the part-Irish myself, from a great-grandfather.
    Most people are. The most common recent ancestor of Western Europeans was surprisingly recent, 12th Century I think. Doesn’t mean anything. It’s real and understandable- a real hatred
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,512
    edited January 2023
    kjh said:

    IanB2 said:

    kjh said:

    kjh said:

    Driver said:

    kjh said:

    Driver said:

    TimS said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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:

    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.
    His plan was to tour for 2 years and sold his house on retiring. He had to come home. After 90 days he has to come home park up for 90 days and then start again from scratch.

    If you have a holiday home you have to restrict your travel to 90 days on a rolling basis. If you even cut it fine and your plane is delayed it buggers you up so you really haven't got the full 90 days as that is too risky. Several I know have been caught out by that.

    Taking a dog abroad is a real pain now. There is no spontaneous trips anymore. It takes weeks of planning to take your dog in the car. No more popping on the ferry or in the tunnel.

    You try taking your dog abroad in your car without massive pre planning now.
    British owners are managing to get EU pet passports, as I have from Belgium, and while some countries led by France are trying to clamp down on this, others such as Spain, Germany and Ireland are more relaxed about it, and even in France people are still finding vets willing to oblige. Plus there’s the Northern Ireland loophole, since NI is still able to issue EU PPs, at least for the time being.

    Once you have a PP it’s like the old days for dog travel, until all the tapeworm spaces are filled.
    Yes we discussed this sometime ago when you advised me for which I was very grateful. 2 of us with 3 dogs wanted to make a short trip to look at a property in France. It cost significantly more to take each dog than it did for us to travel because of the paperwork which is bonkers, but that was irrelevant because we couldn't get the vet appointment anyway because of the shortage of those qualified and we weren't willing to risk getting the paperwork sorted at the port.
    Best advice is to use Abbeywell in Folkestone; they specialise in issuing AHCs for travelling pets, and you can do the whole thing by email and pick the documentation up on way to ferry or tunnel, £99 per dog. If you hunt about there are some other specialists setting up, with similar pricing, such as Passpets in Havant.
  • Options
    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Ireland and Britain are almost intimately historically connected, whether anyone on either side likes it or not. Joyce also had trouble resolving this contradiction, and often wrote in English about the quandary .

    As I mentioned a few weeks back, I remember reading that were up to 12 million people of partly Irish descent, in England alone. There must be another couple of million in Scotland.

    Virtually all of that history is negative. As I said up thread it’s a mighty shock to the historically challenged English to find out how much Irish people hate them. There’s a lot of naïveté about how we are one big happy family whereas we’re they’re implacable historic enemy
    I'm not sure that that makes us one big happy family. It certainly means that the ethnic interconnections are much greater than many people on both sides might want to acknowledge, though.
    You miss the point. We’re not. They absolutely despise us all but we on this side of the Irish Sea are in constant denial about it.
    That's not my experience in Ireland either, I must say. I'm also in fact yet another of the part-Irish myself, from a great-grandfather.
    Most people are. The most common recent ancestor of Western Europeans was surprisingly recent, 12th Century I think. Doesn’t mean anything. It’s real and understandable- a real hatred
    I think you're conflating the reawakening of certain hostilities from Brexit with hatred at every level. I've just not experienced that in Ireland.
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,867
    100% of this thread is now superseded by a New Thread
  • Options
    CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,793
    Gender Self ID is a hopeless mess of contradictions. Today, Lord Falconer suggested sex offenders won’t abuse Gender Self ID because they’d risk a jail sentence if they lied. Last I heard offenders tend to be willing to risk jail. 🤦‍♂️👇

    https://twitter.com/TwisterFilm/status/1620474512599818247
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,512

    Foxy said:

    geoffw said:

    BBC reporting the IMF projection as if it were fact rather than conjecture.

    In years pre Covid the IMF forecasts published for the UK in 2017 and 2018 were accurate within 0.1% of the actual figure.

    We are coming out of 3 very unusual years with many unexpected events, but prior to that the IMF forecasts seemed pretty accurate.
    I want to believe that those behind the forecasts don’t have an agenda, or preconceptions, but sadly I suspect they do. The assessments are not done blind. Most economists seem to be very down on the U.K. right now because they see Brexit as wrong. I think it may mean that where data is uncertain, or guesstimates need to be made, unfavourable assumptions are chosen.

    Time will tell. I still remember the triple dip that never was.

    I am reminded of all those dire warnings about a massive recession just as a result of voting for Brexit, let alone actually doing it. Whatever faith I had left in forecasters before that point disappeared when it became clear they had ramped up the doom and gloom exponentially.
    Overestimated how quickly it would arrive, more like.
  • Options
    turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 15,376
    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    geoffw said:

    BBC reporting the IMF projection as if it were fact rather than conjecture.

    In years pre Covid the IMF forecasts published for the UK in 2017 and 2018 were accurate within 0.1% of the actual figure.

    We are coming out of 3 very unusual years with many unexpected events, but prior to that the IMF forecasts seemed pretty accurate.
    I want to believe that those behind the forecasts don’t have an agenda, or preconceptions, but sadly I suspect they do. The assessments are not done blind. Most economists seem to be very down on the U.K. right now because they see Brexit as wrong. I think it may mean that where data is uncertain, or guesstimates need to be made, unfavourable assumptions are chosen.

    Time will tell. I still remember the triple dip that never was.

    2017 and 2018 forecasts were after the Brexit vote, and as I pointed out, accurate to within 0.1%.

    What about 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022?
  • Options
    OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,181
    DougSeal said:

    Sean_F said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is
    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
    You might think differently, if Sinn Fein wins the next Irish election.
    The Anglophobia in Ireland was never far under the surface, even pre Brexit. I think most English visitors to Ireland are shocked by how much we are all hated there. It’s a product of our poor history education that makes us think that we have ever been a big friendly bunch of islands, but (justifiably) they really really loath us.
    I must have met hundreds of Irish people over the years and I've always thought they harboured far less hostility towards the English than they had a right to. Of course they will make comments about the English but usually good humoured ones. I think the idea that the average Irish person has some deep loathing for the English is really wide of the mark.
  • Options
    30 point Labour lead by July.

    Also, Sunak is useless. Now Raab is on the loose
  • Options

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    DJ41a said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    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.)

    image
    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.
    It is once you add the 22% of 25 to 34s and 1% of 16-24s who have also bought a property with a mortgage
    Good God no it is not saying that!

    Please read my post properly.

    By your logic if the chart says "52% of those aged 35-44 have bought a property with a mortgage" then it also says:

    81.9% of those aged 45-54 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    95.6% of those aged 55-64 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    100% of those over 65 have bought a property with a mortgage.

    (And also 100% of those over 65 own a property without a mortgage.)

    You have misunderstood the chart. Feel free to admit you are wr*ng, it's not hard ;-)

    image
    Well it certainly doesn't say only 29% of 35-44s have a property with a mortgage either or only 61% of over 65s are owner occupiers.

    You simply can't bring yourself to admit you were wrong, can you?
    I genuinely can't read that graph in any way that makes sense. Surely the lesson of this is that people should stop producing graphs that are so incoherent in what they are trying to show.
    Actually looking at it I can understand it but it is not immediately clear. Ben is right and HYUFD is wrong.

    for the 35 - 44 tranche a total of 32.6% of people have bought a house. That is split down into 3.3% who own it outright and 29.3% who own it with a mortgage. Obviously the house ownership grows with age and just as obviously by the time you get to the 65 or over age range the vast majority of those house owners have now paid off their mortgages. Hence 61.6% own outright whilst 4.4% still have a mortgage - making total house ownership of
    66% of the age range.

    I think... :)
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,867
    It's just me arguing with me on the new thread, just sayin'
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,512
    edited January 2023

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    DJ41a said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    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.)

    image
    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.
    It is once you add the 22% of 25 to 34s and 1% of 16-24s who have also bought a property with a mortgage
    Good God no it is not saying that!

    Please read my post properly.

    By your logic if the chart says "52% of those aged 35-44 have bought a property with a mortgage" then it also says:

    81.9% of those aged 45-54 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    95.6% of those aged 55-64 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    100% of those over 65 have bought a property with a mortgage.

    (And also 100% of those over 65 own a property without a mortgage.)

    You have misunderstood the chart. Feel free to admit you are wr*ng, it's not hard ;-)

    image
    Well it certainly doesn't say only 29% of 35-44s have a property with a mortgage either or only 61% of over 65s are owner occupiers.

    You simply can't bring yourself to admit you were wrong, can you?
    I genuinely can't read that graph in any way that makes sense. Surely the lesson of this is that people should stop producing graphs that are so incoherent in what they are trying to show.
    It’s a bad graph, with no title or explanation. But since the numbers add up to 100 reading across, it does appear that it’s the populations of those who have paid off their mortgages and those that still have one, distributed across the age ranges. But since we have no idea how big the two populations are to start with, not how the base population breaks down across the age categories, it is truly a rubbish graph.
  • Options
    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,295

    DougSeal said:

    Sean_F said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is
    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
    You might think differently, if Sinn Fein wins the next Irish election.
    The Anglophobia in Ireland was never far under the surface, even pre Brexit. I think most English visitors to Ireland are shocked by how much we are all hated there. It’s a product of our poor history education that makes us think that we have ever been a big friendly bunch of islands, but (justifiably) they really really loath us.
    I must have met hundreds of Irish people over the years and I've always thought they harboured far less hostility towards the English than they had a right to. Of course they will make comments about the English but usually good humoured ones. I think the idea that the average Irish person has some deep loathing for the English is really wide of the mark.
    Very naive
  • Options
    IanB2 said:

    Foxy said:

    geoffw said:

    BBC reporting the IMF projection as if it were fact rather than conjecture.

    In years pre Covid the IMF forecasts published for the UK in 2017 and 2018 were accurate within 0.1% of the actual figure.

    We are coming out of 3 very unusual years with many unexpected events, but prior to that the IMF forecasts seemed pretty accurate.
    I want to believe that those behind the forecasts don’t have an agenda, or preconceptions, but sadly I suspect they do. The assessments are not done blind. Most economists seem to be very down on the U.K. right now because they see Brexit as wrong. I think it may mean that where data is uncertain, or guesstimates need to be made, unfavourable assumptions are chosen.

    Time will tell. I still remember the triple dip that never was.

    I am reminded of all those dire warnings about a massive recession just as a result of voting for Brexit, let alone actually doing it. Whatever faith I had left in forecasters before that point disappeared when it became clear they had ramped up the doom and gloom exponentially.
    Overestimated how quickly it would arrive, more like.
    No, it was the very act of voting that the reports said would cause the recession. That was clearly bollocks no matter what one thought of Brexit.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,185

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    DJ41a said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    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.)

    image
    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.
    It is once you add the 22% of 25 to 34s and 1% of 16-24s who have also bought a property with a mortgage
    Good God no it is not saying that!

    Please read my post properly.

    By your logic if the chart says "52% of those aged 35-44 have bought a property with a mortgage" then it also says:

    81.9% of those aged 45-54 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    95.6% of those aged 55-64 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    100% of those over 65 have bought a property with a mortgage.

    (And also 100% of those over 65 own a property without a mortgage.)

    You have misunderstood the chart. Feel free to admit you are wr*ng, it's not hard ;-)

    image
    Well it certainly doesn't say only 29% of 35-44s have a property with a mortgage either or only 61% of over 65s are owner occupiers.

    You simply can't bring yourself to admit you were wrong, can you?
    I genuinely can't read that graph in any way that makes sense. Surely the lesson of this is that people should stop producing graphs that are so incoherent in what they are trying to show.
    Actually looking at it I can understand it but it is not immediately clear. Ben is right and HYUFD is wrong.

    for the 35 - 44 tranche a total of 32.6% of people have bought a house. That is split down into 3.3% who own it outright and 29.3% who own it with a mortgage. Obviously the house ownership grows with age and just as obviously by the time you get to the 65 or over age range the vast majority of those house owners have now paid off their mortgages. Hence 61.6% own outright whilst 4.4% still have a mortgage - making total house ownership of
    66% of the age range.

    I think... :)
    He clearly wasn't when he said earlier that most had not bought with a mortgage by age 55-64 based on his interpretation of the graph
  • Options
    IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,512

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    DJ41a said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    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.)

    image
    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.
    It is once you add the 22% of 25 to 34s and 1% of 16-24s who have also bought a property with a mortgage
    Good God no it is not saying that!

    Please read my post properly.

    By your logic if the chart says "52% of those aged 35-44 have bought a property with a mortgage" then it also says:

    81.9% of those aged 45-54 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    95.6% of those aged 55-64 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    100% of those over 65 have bought a property with a mortgage.

    (And also 100% of those over 65 own a property without a mortgage.)

    You have misunderstood the chart. Feel free to admit you are wr*ng, it's not hard ;-)

    image
    Well it certainly doesn't say only 29% of 35-44s have a property with a mortgage either or only 61% of over 65s are owner occupiers.

    You simply can't bring yourself to admit you were wrong, can you?
    I genuinely can't read that graph in any way that makes sense. Surely the lesson of this is that people should stop producing graphs that are so incoherent in what they are trying to show.
    Actually looking at it I can understand it but it is not immediately clear. Ben is right and HYUFD is wrong.

    for the 35 - 44 tranche a total of 32.6% of people have bought a house. That is split down into 3.3% who own it outright and 29.3% who own it with a mortgage. Obviously the house ownership grows with age and just as obviously by the time you get to the 65 or over age range the vast majority of those house owners have now paid off their mortgages. Hence 61.6% own outright whilst 4.4% still have a mortgage - making total house ownership of
    66% of the age range.

    I think... :)
    Nope!
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,185
    edited January 2023
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    DJ41a said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    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.)

    image
    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.
    It is once you add the 22% of 25 to 34s and 1% of 16-24s who have also bought a property with a mortgage
    Good God no it is not saying that!

    Please read my post properly.

    By your logic if the chart says "52% of those aged 35-44 have bought a property with a mortgage" then it also says:

    81.9% of those aged 45-54 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    95.6% of those aged 55-64 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    100% of those over 65 have bought a property with a mortgage.

    (And also 100% of those over 65 own a property without a mortgage.)

    You have misunderstood the chart. Feel free to admit you are wr*ng, it's not hard ;-)

    image
    Well it certainly doesn't say only 29% of 35-44s have a property with a mortgage either or only 61% of over 65s are owner occupiers.

    You simply can't bring yourself to admit you were wrong, can you?
    I genuinely can't read that graph in any way that makes sense. Surely the lesson of this is that people should stop producing graphs that are so incoherent in what they are trying to show.
    Actually looking at it I can understand it but it is not immediately clear. Ben is right and HYUFD is wrong.

    for the 35 - 44 tranche a total of 32.6% of people have bought a house. That is split down into 3.3% who own it outright and 29.3% who own it with a mortgage. Obviously the house ownership grows with age and just as obviously by the time you get to the 65 or over age range the vast majority of those house owners have now paid off their mortgages. Hence 61.6% own outright whilst 4.4% still have a mortgage - making total house ownership of
    66% of the age range.

    I think... :)
    He clearly wasn't when he said earlier that most had not bought with a mortgage by age 55-64 based on his interpretation of the graph
    79% are owner occupiers by over 65 rather than 66%

    https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9239/
  • Options
    BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,867
    edited January 2023

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    DJ41a said:

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    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.)

    image
    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.
    It is once you add the 22% of 25 to 34s and 1% of 16-24s who have also bought a property with a mortgage
    Good God no it is not saying that!

    Please read my post properly.

    By your logic if the chart says "52% of those aged 35-44 have bought a property with a mortgage" then it also says:

    81.9% of those aged 45-54 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    95.6% of those aged 55-64 have bought a property with a mortgage, and

    100% of those over 65 have bought a property with a mortgage.

    (And also 100% of those over 65 own a property without a mortgage.)

    You have misunderstood the chart. Feel free to admit you are wr*ng, it's not hard ;-)

    image
    Well it certainly doesn't say only 29% of 35-44s have a property with a mortgage either or only 61% of over 65s are owner occupiers.

    You simply can't bring yourself to admit you were wrong, can you?
    I genuinely can't read that graph in any way that makes sense. Surely the lesson of this is that people should stop producing graphs that are so incoherent in what they are trying to show.
    Actually looking at it I can understand it but it is not immediately clear. Ben is right and HYUFD is wrong.

    for the 35 - 44 tranche a total of 32.6% of people have bought a house. That is split down into 3.3% who own it outright and 29.3% who own it with a mortgage. Obviously the house ownership grows with age and just as obviously by the time you get to the 65 or over age range the vast majority of those house owners have now paid off their mortgages. Hence 61.6% own outright whilst 4.4% still have a mortgage - making total house ownership of
    66% of the age range.

    I think... :)
    Ben is right - yes.

    Your 2nd paragraph, er, no not so. You cannot deduce what % of the age group 35-44 have bought a house. You have added apples and pears. Apples in this case is the % of mortgage holders who are 35-44 and pears is the % of outright owners who are 35-44. You cannot sensibly add those two percentages together.
  • Options
    WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,503
    edited January 2023
    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Sean_F said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is
    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
    You might think differently, if Sinn Fein wins the next Irish election.
    The Anglophobia in Ireland was never far under the surface, even pre Brexit. I think most English visitors to Ireland are shocked by how much we are all hated there. It’s a product of our poor history education that makes us think that we have ever been a big friendly bunch of islands, but (justifiably) they really really loath us.
    I must have met hundreds of Irish people over the years and I've always thought they harboured far less hostility towards the English than they had a right to. Of course they will make comments about the English but usually good humoured ones. I think the idea that the average Irish person has some deep loathing for the English is really wide of the mark.
    Very naive
    But you're also taking a very blanket view. Both the majority of the many London Irish that I've known over the years, and the Irish-Irish that I've met in Ireland, haven't really tallied with it at all.

    That's not to say that the British should be fooled into thinking Brexit hasn't revived real grievances and resentments, quite justifiably so, or also question what the ignoring and degrading of Ireland's interests in the Northern Ireland borders row says about certain Brexiters ; but that's not the same as saying we face an entire neighbour full of hatred.
  • Options
    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,295

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Sean_F said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is
    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
    You might think differently, if Sinn Fein wins the next Irish election.
    The Anglophobia in Ireland was never far under the surface, even pre Brexit. I think most English visitors to Ireland are shocked by how much we are all hated there. It’s a product of our poor history education that makes us think that we have ever been a big friendly bunch of islands, but (justifiably) they really really loath us.
    I must have met hundreds of Irish people over the years and I've always thought they harboured far less hostility towards the English than they had a right to. Of course they will make comments about the English but usually good humoured ones. I think the idea that the average Irish person has some deep loathing for the English is really wide of the mark.
    Very naive
    But you're also taking a very blanket view. Both the majority of the many London Irish that I've known over the years, and the Irish-Irish that I've met in Ireland, haven't really tallied with it at all.

    That's not to say that the British should be fooled into thinking that Brexit hasn't revived real grievances and resentments, and justifiably so, or also question what the ignoring and degrading of Ireland's interests in the Northern Ireland borders row says about certain Brexiters ; but that's not the same as saying we face an entire neighbour full of hatred.
    We oppressed them for 850 years. Just because a few people you’ve met in the pub were able to hide their resentment doesn’t magically wish away the fact that, on the whole, most people in Ireland have a visceral dislike of us. And justifiably. We have always been, and always will be, their enemy.
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,845
    edited January 2023

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    geoffw said:

    BBC reporting the IMF projection as if it were fact rather than conjecture.

    In years pre Covid the IMF forecasts published for the UK in 2017 and 2018 were accurate within 0.1% of the actual figure.

    We are coming out of 3 very unusual years with many unexpected events, but prior to that the IMF forecasts seemed pretty accurate.
    I want to believe that those behind the forecasts don’t have an agenda, or preconceptions, but sadly I suspect they do. The assessments are not done blind. Most economists seem to be very down on the U.K. right now because they see Brexit as wrong. I think it may mean that where data is uncertain, or guesstimates need to be made, unfavourable assumptions are chosen.

    Time will tell. I still remember the triple dip that never was.

    2017 and 2018 forecasts were after the Brexit vote, and as I pointed out, accurate to within 0.1%.

    What about 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022?
    Based on IMF Jan forecasts:

    2019 was 0.1% under estimate
    2020 was a 12.4% over estimate (!!)
    2021 was a 3% underestimate
    2022 was a prediction of 4.7% growth.

    Obviously 2020-2022 were impacted directly by covid and Ukraine.

    My own prediction on Jan 1 on PB was to be more or less flat all year.
  • Options
    CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,231
    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Ireland and Britain are almost intimately historically connected, whether anyone on either side likes it or not. Joyce also had trouble resolving this contradiction, and often wrote in English about the quandary .

    As I mentioned a few weeks back, I remember reading that were up to 12 million people of partly Irish descent, in England alone. There must be another couple of million in Scotland.

    Virtually all of that history is negative. As I said up thread it’s a mighty shock to the historically challenged English to find out how much Irish people hate them. There’s a lot of naïveté about how we are one big happy family whereas we’re they’re implacable historic enemy
    I'm not sure that that makes us one big happy family. It certainly means that the ethnic interconnections are much greater than many people on both sides might want to acknowledge, though.
    You miss the point. We’re not. They absolutely despise us all but we on this side of the Irish Sea are in constant denial about it.
    An exaggeration. They do not despise each and every English person.

    What is certainly true is that the English have very little understanding of their history in Ireland and how they treated the Irish in their own country and those who migrated here. There is a great deal of arrogant condescension in their approach to Ireland and this has been particularly noticeable among many Tories.

    The Queen's visit to Ireland in 2011 did a great deal of good to relations between the two countries. It is a very great shame that the years since have undercut so much of that.
  • Options
    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Sean_F said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is
    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
    You might think differently, if Sinn Fein wins the next Irish election.
    The Anglophobia in Ireland was never far under the surface, even pre Brexit. I think most English visitors to Ireland are shocked by how much we are all hated there. It’s a product of our poor history education that makes us think that we have ever been a big friendly bunch of islands, but (justifiably) they really really loath us.
    I must have met hundreds of Irish people over the years and I've always thought they harboured far less hostility towards the English than they had a right to. Of course they will make comments about the English but usually good humoured ones. I think the idea that the average Irish person has some deep loathing for the English is really wide of the mark.
    Very naive
    But you're also taking a very blanket view. Both the majority of the many London Irish that I've known over the years, and the Irish-Irish that I've met in Ireland, haven't really tallied with it at all.

    That's not to say that the British should be fooled into thinking that Brexit hasn't revived real grievances and resentments, and justifiably so, or also question what the ignoring and degrading of Ireland's interests in the Northern Ireland borders row says about certain Brexiters ; but that's not the same as saying we face an entire neighbour full of hatred.
    We oppressed them for 850 years. Just because a few people you’ve met in the pub were able to hide their resentment doesn’t magically wish away the fact that, on the whole, most people in Ireland have a visceral dislike of us. And justifiably. We have always been, and always will be, their enemy.
    This is very pessimistic and I think quite bleak, but I can see I won't change your view.
  • Options
    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,295
    Cyclefree said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Ireland and Britain are almost intimately historically connected, whether anyone on either side likes it or not. Joyce also had trouble resolving this contradiction, and often wrote in English about the quandary .

    As I mentioned a few weeks back, I remember reading that were up to 12 million people of partly Irish descent, in England alone. There must be another couple of million in Scotland.

    Virtually all of that history is negative. As I said up thread it’s a mighty shock to the historically challenged English to find out how much Irish people hate them. There’s a lot of naïveté about how we are one big happy family whereas we’re they’re implacable historic enemy
    I'm not sure that that makes us one big happy family. It certainly means that the ethnic interconnections are much greater than many people on both sides might want to acknowledge, though.
    You miss the point. We’re not. They absolutely despise us all but we on this side of the Irish Sea are in constant denial about it.
    An exaggeration. They do not despise each and every English person.

    What is certainly true is that the English have very little understanding of their history in Ireland and how they treated the Irish in their own country and those who migrated here. There is a great deal of arrogant condescension in their approach to Ireland and this has been particularly noticeable among many Tories.

    The Queen's visit to Ireland in 2011 did a great deal of good to relations between the two countries. It is a very great shame that the years since have undercut so much of that.
    The visit that provoked a riot in central Dublin? Yes, all warmth and good wishes. Come on!
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 62,859
    This is fairly sobering, though not entirely surprising reading.
    I wonder what the results would be for the UK.

    The state of opinion toward gender, power, and policy.

    https://perryundem.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/PerryUndem-Landscape-of-Views-toward-Women-Gender-and-Abortion.pdf
    22% of respondents strongly agree that “the country would be better off if we had more women in political office” (other data suggest that most people know men are overrepresented in political office)
    • 37% strongly agree: “I want there to be equal numbers of men and women in positions of power in our society”
    • 26% strongly disagree: “Most women interpret innocent remarks as sexist”
    • Half (48%) says a man should “definitely” be prosecuted if he forces his wife to have sex against her will (24% probably;
    15% probably or definitely not; 14% unsure)
    • Anti-abortion respondents are more likely to think a male partner knows that abortion is “ending a life or a potential life”
    (55%) than the woman having an abortion (38%)
    • A majority of Republicans hold hostile sexist views while at the same time feeling full gender equality has been achieved.

    Perhaps most telling of all, in our view, is the finding that suggests half of the public (49%) thinks “there are many irresponsible women who will decide to have an abortion up until the moment of birth.” Pause and reflect on that. What does it say about general attitudes toward women when half the public believes there are many women who will choose an elective abortion at, say, 39 weeks of pregnancy? (We didn’t use the term “elective” because we don’t think it’s well known)...


  • Options
    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,295
    Cyclefree said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Ireland and Britain are almost intimately historically connected, whether anyone on either side likes it or not. Joyce also had trouble resolving this contradiction, and often wrote in English about the quandary .

    As I mentioned a few weeks back, I remember reading that were up to 12 million people of partly Irish descent, in England alone. There must be another couple of million in Scotland.

    Virtually all of that history is negative. As I said up thread it’s a mighty shock to the historically challenged English to find out how much Irish people hate them. There’s a lot of naïveté about how we are one big happy family whereas we’re they’re implacable historic enemy
    I'm not sure that that makes us one big happy family. It certainly means that the ethnic interconnections are much greater than many people on both sides might want to acknowledge, though.
    You miss the point. We’re not. They absolutely despise us all but we on this side of the Irish Sea are in constant denial about it.
    An exaggeration. They do not despise each and every English person.

    What is certainly true is that the English have very little understanding of their history in Ireland and how they treated the Irish in their own country and those who migrated here. There is a great deal of arrogant condescension in their approach to Ireland and this has been particularly noticeable among many Tories.

    The Queen's visit to Ireland in 2011 did a great deal of good to relations between the two countries. It is a very great shame that the years since have undercut so much of that.
    Looks like she was really welcome…

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IeESIvNyyaQ
  • Options
    OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 15,181
    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Sean_F said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is
    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
    You might think differently, if Sinn Fein wins the next Irish election.
    The Anglophobia in Ireland was never far under the surface, even pre Brexit. I think most English visitors to Ireland are shocked by how much we are all hated there. It’s a product of our poor history education that makes us think that we have ever been a big friendly bunch of islands, but (justifiably) they really really loath us.
    I must have met hundreds of Irish people over the years and I've always thought they harboured far less hostility towards the English than they had a right to. Of course they will make comments about the English but usually good humoured ones. I think the idea that the average Irish person has some deep loathing for the English is really wide of the mark.
    Very naive
    Where did you get this view? Clearly you've had very different experiences of going to Ireland or meeting Irish people than I have. I'd be interested in knowing more about your experiences.
  • Options
    WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,503
    edited January 2023
    DougSeal said:

    Cyclefree said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Ireland and Britain are almost intimately historically connected, whether anyone on either side likes it or not. Joyce also had trouble resolving this contradiction, and often wrote in English about the quandary .

    As I mentioned a few weeks back, I remember reading that were up to 12 million people of partly Irish descent, in England alone. There must be another couple of million in Scotland.

    Virtually all of that history is negative. As I said up thread it’s a mighty shock to the historically challenged English to find out how much Irish people hate them. There’s a lot of naïveté about how we are one big happy family whereas we’re they’re implacable historic enemy
    I'm not sure that that makes us one big happy family. It certainly means that the ethnic interconnections are much greater than many people on both sides might want to acknowledge, though.
    You miss the point. We’re not. They absolutely despise us all but we on this side of the Irish Sea are in constant denial about it.
    An exaggeration. They do not despise each and every English person.

    What is certainly true is that the English have very little understanding of their history in Ireland and how they treated the Irish in their own country and those who migrated here. There is a great deal of arrogant condescension in their approach to Ireland and this has been particularly noticeable among many Tories.

    The Queen's visit to Ireland in 2011 did a great deal of good to relations between the two countries. It is a very great shame that the years since have undercut so much of that.
    Looks like she was really welcome…

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IeESIvNyyaQ
    Well, if you're determined to see every expression of the greatest hostility as the expression of the rule, I can't see what's going to change your mind. Preconceptions from any direction are always susceptible to being broken down by human connection.
  • Options
    MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 25,350
    edited January 2023
    TimS said:

    Roger said:

    TimS said:

    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.
    Me too.

    And what really pulls my plonker is barstewards with connections like Stanley Johnson getting their French citizenship, which doubtless allows his children, should they so desire, access to their own EU citizenship and unfettered movement around the 27 when the mood takes them.
  • Options
    LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 15,451
    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    DougSeal said:

    Sean_F said:

    carnforth said:

    TimS said:

    TimS said:

    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”.
    I have not "renounced" mine either, but it is
    certainly very, very secondary these days. If people ask me where I come from, I say "Ireland".

    Nowhere is perfect and Ireland has its problems too, but at least it is not the bile-filled cauldron of fools that large swathes of UK public life is these days.
    You might think differently, if Sinn Fein wins the next Irish election.
    The Anglophobia in Ireland was never far under the surface, even pre Brexit. I think most English visitors to Ireland are shocked by how much we are all hated there. It’s a product of our poor history education that makes us think that we have ever been a big friendly bunch of islands, but (justifiably) they really really loath us.
    I must have met hundreds of Irish people over the years and I've always thought they harboured far less hostility towards the English than they had a right to. Of course they will make comments about the English but usually good humoured ones. I think the idea that the average Irish person has some deep loathing for the English is really wide of the mark.
    Very naive
    But you're also taking a very blanket view. Both the majority of the many London Irish that I've known over the years, and the Irish-Irish that I've met in Ireland, haven't really tallied with it at all.

    That's not to say that the British should be fooled into thinking that Brexit hasn't revived real grievances and resentments, and justifiably so, or also question what the ignoring and degrading of Ireland's interests in the Northern Ireland borders row says about certain Brexiters ; but that's not the same as saying we face an entire neighbour full of hatred.
    We oppressed them for 850 years. Just because a few people you’ve met in the pub were able to hide their resentment doesn’t magically wish away the fact that, on the whole, most people in Ireland have a visceral dislike of us. And justifiably. We have always been, and always will be, their enemy.
    If that's the case then they're very good at hiding it to youngish English blokes who marry their womenfolk. Why, only yesterday evening, my father-in-law spontaneously* - well, after a couple of whiskies - declared that I was welcome to watch cricket on the kitchen TV any time I wanted. And whenever Ireland defeat England in the rugby my mother-in-law apologises for cheering quite so loudly.

    * I think he was happy about the size of the coal fire I'd built earlier that day.
This discussion has been closed.