Thread for documenting effects of Brexit in your own situations

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irish grandparents, and probably will tbh. no other personal impact apart from family divisions. but the company i work doe does quite a lot of continental european work and several contracts i’ve been working on have asked for them based out of somewhere not incorporated in the U.K. - we tend to do those out of the dutch office, but it can be a pita.

My consulting job that ended on Friday basically is slowly making people in London redundant and building out offices in Paris and Frankfurt.

This thread is surprisingly light on substantive effects (so far). Seems more about what people are planning to do, rather than any effects so far being felt.

i've read lots more articles about brexit than i used to

i mean not a lot overall

but still

huge increase

Might have to buy a new passport 2 years & a bit after renewing it last time.

Not sure about other stuff since I live abroad.

I know people who have had to move back to the UK from jobs abroad in order to maintain their five-year continued residency status, though nothing so dramatic for me.

There is an impact on my work but it’s more a case of uncertainty leading to stasis rather than anything actually negative yet. But nothing has happened - the UK is still in the EU and the impact of it not being in the Eu won’t be fully felt until next year.

At least one entire department at my work will straight up not exist once we leave the eu.

Feeling the effects already with an increased workload for clients preparing for Brexit. In case of a hard Brexit or no deal I will probably get a promotion with all the excess work we will be getting in our department at work.

Still the biggest remoaner you will find.

Looks like the pound will remain ballsed up for my holidays this year.

Def feeling the effect with us being unable to recruit as many talented EU nationals as usual, there isn’t an adequate supply of UK nationals that can speak and write fluently in most of the languages we work in with the required quantitative ability to back it up. Hard to convince people to move where they have no idea if they can stay in a couple years. Busy, busy.

Probably going to be March before theres much more to put here?

if "situation" includes "how it's affecting my mental health", then no. A horrible feedback loop of joblessness --> more time spent on Twitter --> more time spent reading about how crap Brexit is --> helplessness & less inclination to do anything much (inc apply for jobs) --> repeat

Ugh, GG, sorry to hear it.

Sorry to hear that, Grandpoint. The psychological effects of this are obviously things which manifest in different ways, particularly this elongated sense of limbo. Perhaps this isn't the best of threads, the idea was to separate out the tangible from the psychological sort of partly for this reason.

It occurred to me yesterday that I need to send hundreds of kg of extremely time-sensitive papers to Spain in April and, like Theresa May, do not currently have a Plan B in case the ports are stuffed.

I heard today from someone who knows someone who works at angl1@n w@ter and apparently because the chemicals they use to treat the water come from abroad they are having to stockpile in case of a no deal Brexit - the problem is that they are running out of warehouse space to store it. Between the purchase of extra chemicals and the rental of extra space we’re talking about a fucking massive amount of money being spent to make sure we don’t run out of clean drinking water a week into July.

According to the person I was talking to this is likely to result in a significant increase in everyone’s water bill whether we leave without a deal or not. This should maybe have been obvious but I hadn’t really considered how much a no deal Brexit would fuck things up just by being a possibility

the way that the political process has created so much uncertainty for people and business, to the point where businesses literally have no choice but to start making expensive contingency plans, and despite continual pleading for some certainty, is one of the many disastrous things this paralysed government has done.

and yes i know country and parliament are also paralysed, but it’s the sheer lack of engagement, the empty platitudes spoken directly to experts in their field over the last two years, that really mixes the gall into the blood. the sheer carelessness and indifference to anything other than the plight of the tory party.

no business can avoid making plans that take anything less than the next six months into account.

focused on business in this post but of course you can apply the same amount of pressure to affected people’s psychology and mental state.

adam tooze and david runciman (an extreme sports version of platonic white male academic liberalism) in conversation here covered it from a couple of interesting angles:

existential issues like where they live and with what rights they have in the places that they live and what the legal framework for their identity is.

...

i myself spent all of the formative years of my youth in germany, never acquired a german passport because it didn’t seem necessary and am now faced with losing the legal frame in which that dual identity made sense.

i appreciate that people who are affected in this direct way are a minority. and i have also come to understand what it means to be discussed in those terms - “oh but you’re a small minority”, which is indeed true. and what’s clearly gone out of the picture is the ordinary protections that liberals would want minorities to enjoy, as opposed to the rampaging of thinly based majorities.

there’s quite a number of things there which may stick a bit and are also telling: the sudden position of a privileged white male in a def perceived minority and the perception that liberals are good at protecting the minorities who have considerably more experience of that position than tooze.

nevertheless i thought the removal of a frame for identity and the assertions of a small majority almost amplified in inverse proportion to the slenderness of the majority were interesting observations.

So if one wants to be in France for B-day, what is the best way to get there? Will want to have a car, so flying and passenger train is out. Will the roads to Dover already be crazy in the week leading up to it? When does Operation Stack kick in?

I'm not sure I'd advise it as a course of action (says he, after inviting a bunch of people from Ireland and parts foreign to a wedding in mid-May, and whose hand is currently reaching towards the button marked 'bricking it')

So I've got a conference in Paris at the tail-end of March and am scheduled to return on the 30th. Perhaps I'll be barred from entering the UK as a EU national – I'm very curious to see what'll happen.

Well I just called the Home Office and their answer was basically 'We don't know. Anything's possible in these ludicrous times.' Truly inspiring.

Not sure what's going to happen to some of my students, some were between jobs while they were learning English.

still be able to live and work in the rest of the EU post-Brexit by sponging off my partner’s status.

i would be interested in hearing more about the mechanics of this, SV. is it simply that places you wish to live and work in will allow you to do so because you are there with your partner? or something more complicated?

^ narc

Xp, yes, that’s correct. Non-EU partners of EU citizens can apply for an EEA Family Permit in any EU country as long as the EU national is there for a purpose considered valid (work, study, etc) iirc.

Interesting, thanks! Not narc-ing, promise. Simply in a similar situation as you and reasonably desperate to get any kind of concrete information about what is happening.

In that case consult an expert as I’m absolutely not qualified to be giving advice!

That is my understanding of how it works at present, though, and irrespective of the UK’s future relationship with the EU, the worst case scenario would be similar rights to, for example, the American partner of a Belgian living in Spain.

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/residence/family-residence-rights/non-eu-wife-husband-children/index_en.htm

Kfb, read this page for a quick overview & cross reference with the immigration policy of whatever country you’re living in. Do you mind telling us about your circumstances? If you’re British, some countries have already made assurances.

Can't be arsed with renewing my Portuguese passport. This is my home, for better or worse.

Would you ever consider moving back? If given the chance, I'd love to spend a few years in Portugal fwiw.

Sorry should 'back' turn out to be an inaccurate assumption btw.

Funnily enough three of my cousins used the Portuguese connection to make passports and move here in the last three years. All have jobs and are settled enough. One got married to an Irish woman last year.

Another is planning a move but I somehow doubt that will happen now.

xxp = as it happens I am not Portuguese, just have the parental connection (Brazilian but not going back right now). I love Portugal and would consider going to Porto someday. But really, this is home for me and I want to fight for it - whatever that means.

Fair enough, I was just curious. It's sweet that you've got the option, remote though it may be.

Funnily enough just came across this essay on Pessoa, depression at the world and moving from the UK to Lisbon

https://lithub.com/living-fernando-pessoas-dreamlife-in-lisbon/

Many of the Portuguese people I’ve spoken to attribute this heaviness to the brutal dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar, who maintained a suffocating grip on the country for over four decades through what’s known in Portugal as the “Three F’s”: Football, Fatima (Catholicism), and Fado.

In passing I love the idea that the shorthand for Catholicism in Portugal would be the name of a daughter of Prophet Muhammad!

That is my understanding of how it works at present, though, and irrespective of the UK’s future relationship with the EU, the worst case scenario would be similar rights to, for example, the American partner of a Belgian living in Spain.

great, thanks! that was my understanding too—I just wanted to check in case there was something I'd missed. "desperate" may have been over-selling my actual situation, I meant purely that I'm frustrated (as are not doubt a lot of people) about the utter lack of clarity coming from the UK gov about what's going on for UK citizens abroad. I'm hoovering up any and all information that I can.

Kfb, read this page for a quick overview & cross reference with the immigration policy of whatever country you’re living in. Do you mind telling us about your circumstances? If you’re British, some countries have already made assurances.

thanks for that link! my own circumstances are slightly, er... confusing. I'm a uk citizen (for my sins, apparently) that nominally resides (legally & fully documented) in an EU country but am self-employed and selling consultancy services to another EU country. my host country has assured my residence rights already, but I'm nervous about my status selling said services. to the best of my knowledge my "company" is a fully-fledged EU thing and so shouldn't be affected but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

my partner is a national of my host country, but we aren't married (and have actively been trying to avoid it). the further wrinkle is that for other reasons we are currently living temporarily in london, until august/september. I have no idea how this might or might not affect anything this year.

to contribute more directly to the thread, my own direct concrete effect of Brexit currently is that I have booked a flight next week to go and swap my UK driving licence for my host country's version on the advice released recently, despite previous EU commission documents suggesting that this won't be necessary.

kfb i am feeling that post, and your other posts, and the bewilderment.

i'm pretty straightforward relative to that - a non-EU spouse of an EU citizen living in the UK. i have an EEA-4 in my passport which says in capital letters "permanent residence card" yet which also says "expires 20 april 2022" :/ it's a uk vignette, but based on a right flowing from the UK's membership of the EU. shrug_smiley.gif

more worryingly, i have two kids, born here in the UK, both with american and french passports but not a UK passport (y because neither parent is british). what happens when they get older? want to vote? my instinct is do nothing, wait til they're older, sort it out later. there are a lot of scary newspaper articles about people getting royally fucked with this approach, but we really have done everything right. i came here on a fiancee visa, not a tourist visa, etc.

and we're like fully ready to apply for this free residence permit thing but like... where is it? when's it going to be ready? like literally brexit day apparently, or the day before??

Is it an expiry date like a passport has, which can be renewed?

yes, it is, except.. what if that route doesn't exist any more for to because breggzit

"EEA4? no we don't do those any more, sir"

You’ve been a resident here for over 15 years, might be worth a punt on British ILR (or ask work or your MP).

After that long can’t you apply for citizenship? Not that being a citizen, subject or whatever of the UK is a particular appealing thought. (I’m guess expensive and painful as well)

Expensive. The charges started to apply in 2003, and I’m so glad my ILR started in 1995.

Yeah it's about a grand, and if you fuck up part of the application and have to reapply you don't get your money back. I guess i should have done it before now but I NEVER NEEDED TO MASSIVE_SHRUGGIE_GRIN_BIGGER_THAN_THE_SUN

sympathies for all ilxors and those connected to em anxious abt the most shakey and direct possible effects of the shitshow

im thinking i should encourage mrs mac to investigate dual citizenship or w/e simply for the likely benefits in travel if nothing else. any reason why she shouldnt, or any other thoughts?

yeah i married a half brit btw idk if ive kept that pseudo under wraps til now but i guess brexits rly bringing the light to some ugly truths or w/e

yeatsian possibilities of half-brit to be examined later

My lesson from this all is collect as many passports and residencies as you can, when you can. I wish I’d done something to get Italian residency when I might have been able to.

ugh, horrible. close colleague who has lived in Spain for twenty years, has just found she didn't fill in a bit of paper six years ago, and could be in danger of not being able to claim citizenship. directly caused by the ruptures of brexit. it really has created life-upheaving psychological turmoil for a lot of people.

ugh, horrible. close colleague who has lived in Spain for twenty years, has just found she didn't fill in a bit of paper six years ago, and could be in danger of not being able to claim citizenship. directly caused by the ruptures of brexit. it really has created life-upheaving psychological turmoil for a lot of people.

this pretty much happened to me. i dropped the ball when i first moved, didn't realise i should have registered because my naive brain thought "but EU". had i done the right thing initially i would be holding a different passport right now. sympathies for your colleague, fizzles. surely there's some way of proving her residence to the authorities, even if it's not the official bit of paper?