You may have see it reported in the newspapers but here is the official announcement
1 Like
Just more posturing.
Recently announced that UK will not be making full inspections of everything entering UK from Europe as not prepared.
Talk about pushing the boat out…
Some idiot pushed the UK boat out without any oars… 
Load of rollocks really
2 Likes
Graham
I remember it well it was the 1st January 1973 and the idiot was one Ted Heath.
What we were promised, is not what we have ended up with and at what cost to the UK tax payer.
1 Like
and whose fault was that?
I hope for your sake that the next half century will be as peaceful and prosperous as the last - assuming that you will be remaning in the UK. . . . .
8 Likes
It’s very easy to find the data see how the financial fortune of Britain and her tax payers profited since 1973. That was down to being a member of the EU. If you really believe that membership has cost the taxpayer I can only suggest that the words on the bus are going around and around in your head. Another victory for those who peddle untruths, it amazes me that there are thousands of people who continue to believe the lies even after they have been discredited.
13 Likes
We have benefitted as a nation enormously in so many ways including financial due to being part of Europe. Yes their is a fee to being part of the club but the rewards far outweigh the cost.
3 Likes
ah but, EH didn’t need rollocks or oars as he had sail 
1 Like
I remember a time when the popular cry was “Come back Ted Heath, all forgiven!”
That was when the hated Thatcher was making life hard for those who were were not born with privilege or wealth.
It was she who sold the country down the Atlantic, nothing to do with the EU.
2 Likes
Well, what a surprise that must be for everyone 
2 Likes
My, admittedly somewhat fatalistic attitude, is just let the UK get on with whatever it is they want to do. In the meantime, hopefully the Eurozone’s problems will prevent the €-£ echange rate getting too out of alignment.
I’ve previously lived in other countries outside the UK, but now no longer have any desire to visit the UK and don’t recognise it as the country that I used to know.
1 Like
But some of us do have to keep our links with the UK, if only to keep a watching eye on how our pensions are being fritted away by an uncaring Govt 
2 Likes
I agree in that respect, as most of our income is from UK based pensions, though fortunately they’re all index-linked.
Mind you it’s simple stuff compared to trying to track the see-sawing of our South African pension fund - and as for trying to move money from there - on Thursday and Friday, my wife made seventeen phone calls to an SA bank to move some money from one account to another.
1 Like
You and your wife have our deep sympathy, Mark, our finances were almost collapsed by our decision to sell up in UK in 1991 and move all our then realisable assets to Zambia, to coincide with a change of Government and the institution of a free-market economy.
The Gates of Financial Hell were opened and our assets disappeared in two years.
We managed to escape by selling all our possessions, getting tickets back to UK from Harare, and homelessness: our first night back was spent in a rusty second-hand Ford in a Kent car park, our second in a shelter for homeless families, four miles from our former 4-bedroom detached house. But safe…
1 Like
How odd. At one stage, we were being tempted by someone who was going to buy us out so that we could move to KwaZulu-Natal in SA so we could “live like kings” and would be millionaires (in Rand). He had the appropriate contacts etc etc…
We decided in the end that if it’s too good to be true, it probably is so declined their very kind “offer” and rode out our (then) difficulties. I think we were saved from the jaws of hell by this decision to be honest 
1 Like
Peter, your story is very moving and sadly all too familiar, I’ve known some others who’ve moved ‘back’ and are now struggling. Fortunately I managed to scrape through. Perhaps the African equivalent is a former colleague who was described as having arrived in Grahamstown from Nairobi with ‘nothing more than a short wheel-base Land Rover and a large pair of khaki shorts.’
I became head of a department in a leading South Africa university shortly after the end of Apartheid. Blair had just been elected, things in Europe looked rosy and seemed to be pointing to Fukiyama’s ‘end of history’ hypothesis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man
don’t normally cite Wikipaedia, because it’s not always reliable, but this entry is OK-ish)
The other half of the equation was the exciting prospect of moving to Mandela’s new Rainbow Nation, where one could help effect change in the higher education system and be in the vanguard of making history. In the event I made a few lasting improvements, but eventually a rising tide of local black on white murders led me to choose between erecting an electric fence around my large suburban property and sleeping with a gun on the bedside table, or selling up and losing my career momentum and all my capital by moving back to the UK (in six years, the rand had halved in value against the pound).
Mind you, I’ve no regrets! It was a fantastic experience and a valuable learning curve. Today,I think one can still be romantic about SA, without falling for its clichés. I’ve been back many times since and still love it all (apart from most of Jo’burg).
1 Like
What we have given up by this idiocy seemed pretty good to me so I’ll leave it to you John David to get your sovereignty back before the United Kingdom finally falls to pieces.
I echo that totally, Mark, and thanks for sharing your own remarkable story.
well it allowed me and hundreds of others to pursue productive careers away from the class distinctions holding us working class oiks on the lowest rung of the ladder; opened our horizons, built our understanding of or neighbours, and demolished the hate of them we no see resurfacing in the uk; i thought that had great value for concerned, and contributed to the peace of europe for seventy years, something you evidently disapprove of - although the uk was a beacon for that for forty-five;
i a buggered where the excess cost comes but for me the investment (both ways) in europe was incredibly beneficial; again you would disagree;
i have delightedly taken french nationality, to live a multiply proven better life as part of europe, so i wish you well wanting to go back to isolation or being part of trump’s america;
1 Like