EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

Correct, but I can tell you from experience the non eGate queue is always slower.

Yeah but that is the egate queue, unless I'm really misreading the big glass boxes and screen thingies in the background. The sign btw also says "16+", which only makes sense for egates afaik.

Same here, this guy is really asking for a dressing down but I wouldn't do that for everyone.

Some people you feel sorry for, I spoke to somebody who voted Leave, explained how shitty the UK government is around settled status and that everybody that misses the deadline will be "illegal". He genuinely didn't know, thinks it is wrong and they should change it. I could see he felt bad about it.

And the government didn't change it and of course they don't give a shit about his views either.

The Brexiter that cried wolf then ;)

I'm not sure either tbh, could be fake news. Independent says this :

Frances Coppola, a finance journalist for Forbes and the Financial Times, said airports such as Schiphol appeared to have “jumped the gun” by directing British passport holders to non-EU gates but noted that the change would be implemented across all EU countries from next year.

Yeah pretty much. Not sure why he would mention 'brexit' at all there. It should be clear to any idiot that best-case it wouldn't change anything so the queues are due to something else, and worst-case it would make everything more difficult in which case why is he shooting himself in the foot...

Zurich (yes, I know it's not in the EU) still allowed UK passports to use the EU+Swiss e-gates when I went through there last week.

I can't remember whether a UK flag had been added alongside the Swiss and EU flags or not.

I suppose airports are free to decide who gets to use the electronic gates, no? Or is that some kind of discrimination thing? However, they obviously have a big interest in making the whole thing as quick as possible so they can avoid queues and improve throughput.

In any case, the pic looks like they just preemptively added the UK flag to the list of 'third countries' that need to be mentioned specifically because they're not in the EU (such as Switzerland), but they're actually still letting them use the egates. For now.

Schipol is a fucking disaster of an airport to get through at the best of times, I avoid it whenever I can. Brexit won't make it better, of course.

Definitely saw the extra Union Jack when I passed through Zurich a few weeks ago.

That's a parody/troll account right? Everything on their twitter is so over the top and on the nose 'Brexit/Pints/Women in the Kitchen/PC Parade' I can't believe that it would actually be a real person. How would they get through their day?

Trying to work out whether this is a parody account or not.

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Give up. It's become impossible to tell.

I know several good, intelligent people who voted leave. Their grounds for doing so were reasonable and largely optimistic about what the UK would be. I thought, and still think, that they're wrong (mainly because I think Brexit is primarily a Thatcherite, deregulation stalking-horse), but I can see where they're coming from.

...and then you encounter people like Craig and you can't help but feel that, whatever decent reasons were behind some leave votes, the whole campaign has been largely carried by a bunch of whining, petulant, morons whose highest ambition is to get one over on their perceived enemies in their own country. When did the highest ambition of the political right become to piss off other people?

Yes, same here. Interestingly the sensible, good intelligent ones tend to be the ones who have been anti-EU for a significant amount of time, in most cases since joining, and they tend to be able to have a cogent, considerate conversation about the pros and cons, and very rarely being up immigration as a driving factor. The Craigs of this world seem to have deep seated fears of anything foreign which Brexit has allowed to come to the surface and has given them a boogeyman to blame.

It's a cultural civil war.

It could just be that the morons make the most noise?

As in, they are still a minority, but are very happy to broadcast their ignorance on all frequencies and as loud as possible.

Have you seen The Loudest Voice, about Murdoch and Roger Ailles creating Fox news in order to play to the dark fears and hatred of the public. Terrifying stuff, but a very successful project. The fuckers.

Anyone I know who voted leave displayed many of the characteristics you mention, but were also extremely naive when it came to discussing how it could go, and indeed how it was likely to go.

I found even the more intelligent ones still had to rely on Cherry Picking and could not control anything either, thanks to the government.

Case in point: Socialists in Northern Ireland wanting to leave the EU cos it is too neoliberal, and then they go on TV warning about the risk of a hard border.

Sigh.

Churchillian drift , insofar as he never uttered those words.

When did the highest ambition of the political right become to piss off other people?

Ha! Yup, this seems to be important to a lot of people now.

Maybe it’s a byproduct. We’re in an age where attention is currency (and any gobshite can broadcast their silly opinions for attention). Metropolitan cycling types included of course :)

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/17/italian-man-95-resident-in-uk-for-68-years-told-to-prove-it

Government administration incompetence strikes again.

Note that Alberto Costa voted against making settled status a voluntary registration process, so irony klaxon for him being so concerned about this.

The trouble is in the UK we have no official residence. Many parts of the world require you to register where you live (after something like 3 months) with the authorities and keep them updated when you move. That kind of thing has always been resisted for lots of good reasons but it means it is much harder to know who is living here, how long for etc. It's inevitable that when you try and infer residence from a collection of other databases gathered for other reasons it's going to be a mess.

my mother in law, a 69yr old Italian, has had to go through the windrush process after being refused residency using the settled status app.

she's lived here since she was a child, worked for the NHS and payed national insurance for 30yrs, retired and receives pension etc.

it's been really stressful for her and my father in law.