Well, what a surprise that must be for everyone 
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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.
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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 
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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.
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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…
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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 
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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).
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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;
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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;
| David GAY
15 June |
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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.
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In Reply To
| John David Blackburn johndbl
13 June |
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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.
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This announcement by Gove was to be expected. My intention to move to France has been telescoped from 12 months to 6. My flat in Valencia has gone on sale today at the correct price, after going on sale two weeks before lockdown at the agents’ fantasy price. However, I take a crumb of comfort from this by BBC Europe Editor, Katya Adler
Whatever the next months may bring, negotiators from both sides privately acknowledge this summer is probably too early for big compromises.
The theory is that the “other side” would simply bank those summer compromises and demand more come the autumn.
And if they’re almost there but not quite, come November, the whispered wisdom in Brussels is that with all the “clever lawyers” in town, as they’re described to me, it should be possible to find a way of fudging an extension (though for political face-saving reasons, especially in the UK, not actually calling it an extension) for a limited period beyond the end of the year, if both sides want one, and only if they are very close indeed to sealing the deal.
After all my years EU-watching, I cannot imagine the bloc allowing a deal with close neighbour and ally UK to fall through over a deadline, if the UK government too were keen to keep talking.
But this is not an official topic of discussion in Brussels, never mind London, at this stage.
ie that i need garden mowing help - region beaulieu sur dordogne, sth correze; land size (to be mowed) app; five hundred square métres, mostly one in ten sloped; anyone have any microentrpreneur contacts or names; professional companies are way too expensive for my pension;
i am prepared to invest in a new mower if required, but would also appreciate advice on makes and models; my wife -eight years younger than me, and far fitter now says with the right mower she is happy take on the job, but i want to ensure we don’t make a mistake! so mower must be reliable self-starter ie ( not cord pulled); must be geared (tractor) must suitable for an older person to use - not heavy, and capable of doing the task obviously;
any and all views gratefully received
What I ended up with was far more than I could have hoped for when we first joined. The money they have given Wales for example and the huge markets. Marvellous. But, of course, there have been set backs - Britain vetoing the vote against the introduction of cheap Chinese Steel because they wanted to stay close to China (the US demanded it). So damaging to Germany (and the UK steel business as it happened). Several other damaging actions like that, so I think the EU will probably, all things said and done, be better off without the UK. Just feel so very sorry for Scotland.
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To be entirely accurate we won’t know whether there will be an extension of the transition period until the end of this month.
Perhaps the UK will make an unusual and uncharacteristic U-turn!
Even Johnson has said “no” too many times for this U-Turn.
Thought of borrowing some sheep?
He should get " no U turns" painted on his plane, something like
Maybe in place of the RAF roundels…
might be more appropriate 