Jeez, Rob, I didn't realise the Brexit thing was that severe on you ex-pats. If things get much worse, you won't be able to afford any kind of meal, good, bad or indifferent and you'll be reduced to salivating at gorgeous food programmes, although, mind you, it sounds like you're doing that already!
Over here, the worry is about what kind of border will come into play between the Republic of Ireland and the North. Considering the amount of blood, violence, diplomatic double-speak and Anglo-Irish Agreements (more fudges) it took to virtually get rid of the damned thing, now it looks as if it could be back again, in some shape or form.
I still cling to the belief that, when push comes to shove, the British Government and the EU, between them, will devise some trumped-up method of avoiding a Brexit while keeping egg of the collective faces of the British political classes.
In the meantime, it looks like trouble ahead for all us Europeans.
Hi Seamus,
It's my belief that very few 'exiters' thought it through.
On the one hand I see it as a result of a crazy UK press system where foreign ownership of great swathes of it upsets the natural flow of things. I'm sure that the closure of his Sunday newspaper is still rankling Murdoch hard; retribution against a system is in his hands and he's using it. On the other hand, I have little respect - if any - for a population that hides behind popular slogans and blames Europe for its own shortcomings, ignoring, the while, the benefits that flow into the country from there. Naturally, these people would all like a one-way situation where we get and never have to give. There is neither space here nor time and inclination on my part to numerate what we get back; suffice it to say that travel with the security of an E111 card will never be the same again if this goes through. That promise of pan-European medical help was alone worth every cent we put into the deal. My own family, all in perfect health - thank God - have had occasion to use it when on holiday out here with me. (No, not my cooking - we eat out!)
The very rich will feel little - they constantly review their portfolios anyway - and as usual it's the small guys in the middle who get clobbered - without even having the right to vote, in my case.
(My local French-owned restaurant - one of two I usually frequented - now the only one left- already feels the pinch. Popular with the Brits who live here or come on holiday and rent villas away from the coast, and always packed to the brim on local fiesta days by local people, the owner tells me he needs thirty covers a day for lunch to pay his way. He used to have a queue outside every lunchtime - made me get into my 1 pm sharp routine just to get a table - and now he struggles. The Spanish only come on fiestas because they still suffer from the 2008 banking mess, and the expats are also hit by the same dramatic fall in interest returns. The new Brexit devaluation crisis has simply made it worse for us, but the consequences mean less business for the locals, too...)
I bet nobody on mainland England even gave a thought to your situation re. borders. Ireland is too far away - probably somewhere in America, and near Florida unless it's a suburb of New York. But anyway, it ceased existing as soon as the Sunday Times colour supplements stopped featuring it, wherever it lives. Has David Attenborough done it yet? ;-)
My gut feeling? It was meant to be a ritualistic 'protest' at government that went wrong. Much to the amazement of the protest makers, the same old same old who always have dramatic theories about most things, and definite hatreds for most things foreign. If there's any consolation, they will also be the ones who suffer the most. Pyrrhic though that may be, it brings the slight satisfaction that I shall not burn alone.
Rob