Brexit – The Real Reason
Everyone should listen to this short YouTube video about the real reason why the Tories want Brexit or to leave the European Union. The biggest question, though, is: Why haven’t the Remainers made anything of it? Please SHARE it with Remainers and Brexiteers alike.
Click the link below to watch the video.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:37 — 770.6KB)
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Brexit and Politicians
I am a Remainer. My main reason for not wanting Brexit is that I don’t trust our politicians. I don’t trust any politicians, not only British ones, but it seems to me that we have more chance of justice, if we have a couple of layers of them. Yes, that is more expensive, but at least we ordinary folk might get a fairer crack of the whip.
Just look at the things our British politicians have been caught doing over the last decade, and they have been getting away with it forever! I should imagine that the continental politicians are corrupt too – I can’t see why they shouldn’t be, but then the whole shebang should be reformed. Calling Brexit and retreating into our caves won’t help.
Anyway, another reason for being anti-Brexit crossed my mind the other day. I have always popped over to the Continent for a few days on the spur of the moment every now and then, time and money permitting. This will no longer be possible, will it, if we will require visas to go over there?
I used to fly to Cork – thirty minutes away, but that might not be possible either, because they will be EU and we will be… what? British? Just British… stuck on our own little island with almost all our boats and bridges burned, unless we plan our once-a-year fortnight’s holiday abroad.
How pathetic, how limiting, is that? Everyone else in Europe can just get on a plane or a ferry, and Brits have to queue for a visa!
No wonder rich people are buying EU citizenship in Malta so they don’t get left behind the rest of the world like we will be!
Brexit is a step back into the Dark Ages… voted for in haste and fuelled by liars who only want more power as British politicians – but you can bet your life that they will still have the right to spur-of-the-moment travel – it’s always the bloody same:
One rule for them and another for the rest of us!
Vote for a second referendum! How can it be undemocratic to ask a more informed people what they want? It is the only way that we will move forward.
Use #FBPE (Follow Back, Pro EU) in your social media messages to show you support remain or a second referendum!
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All the best,
Owen
Podcast: Brexit and Politicians
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:41 — 788.9KB)
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Biometric Data for Residency Cards
My wife is Thai, for those of you who don’t know me, and, since we have moved back to the UK to live, she needs a residency card (RCUK) or residency permit. These days, these cards contain biometric data such as iris scans and finger prints.
We first submitted her application for a residency card four months ago, so, for about eighteen weeks, she has had nothing to do, because the local government will not grant her the right to work without one. This is completely illegal, I might add, and contravenes the EU Directives to which the UK is a signatory. However, they don’t care about the law unless it suits them.
The government and the politicians who run it are the biggest crooks around… anyway, we all know that already, so back to the point.
On Thursday, we received a letter from the Home Office telling my wife that she should send them her biometric data within fifteen days of the date of the day that letter was posted. Well, I don’t know what that was, but the date on the letter was the third of the month, but the day we received it was the eleventh. Eight days to get a government letter 150 miles? That doesn’t sound right, does it? She had seven days to complete the task with a weekend in that. That sounds like them trying their damnedest to obfuscate to me.
Anyway, so we caught the bus to the nearest facility – the Post Office fifteen miles away – and asked for the biometric data service.
‘Oh, it’s down today, please come back on Monday. Sorry. Next!’
I wouldn’t move!
I complained to everyone around me and made a total nuisance of myself until the manager came.
‘I’m sorry, Sir’, she said, ‘but the engineer can’t get here for four hours. You may wait over there, if you like’.
I went into overdrive.
The result was that she rebooted the machine and it took my wife’s biometric data!
I thanked them and left, not sure whether to be happy that we had gotten the job done, or whether to be really sad that our once great Royal Post Office – the role model for all the others in the world – has sunken so low.
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All the best,
Owen
Podcast: Biometric Data for Residency Cards
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:01 — 595.8KB)
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Brexit – An Undiscussed Consequence
The main consequences, good and bad, of Brexit – the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union – are being discussed every day in the news, but there is one that I have not heard talked about anywhere except on specialist news groups.
It involves British citizens who have spouses from outside the European Union.
Brexit could devastate the lives of people in this situation, which I and my wife are. She is Thai, and we have been married for ten years with all the papers to prove it.
However, that is not the hurdle.
Under European Law, she is allowed to live with me in Europe, or the European Union, which at the moment still includes the UK. However, after Brexit, European Law will not apply in the UK, British Law will, and under British law, a Brit has to have an income of £25,000 or £65,000 in the bank, before he or she can bring a foreign spouse into the UK to live.
You will notice the MASSIVE difference…
European Law is humane, British Law is mercenary!
At least in this matter.
I cannot imagine being separated from my wife… in fourteen years, we have never spent more than one night apart.
So, we have to interrupt our lives and concentrate on Brexit, so that we don’t fail foul of the indecision of all the powers that are deciding whether I and my wife may remain together on British soil or not.
It is a very sad time for us, and the friends and family that we will leave behind in other countries.
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All the best,
Owen
Podcast: Brexit – An Undiscussed Consequence
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:57 — 573.5KB)
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Moving To The UK
I am from Wales, the UK, and my wife is Thai. Those of you who read this blog will already know this, and we have to get back to the UK under European law, before Brexit pulls up the drawbridge in March 2019, because of my wife’s nationality, as those dear readers will also know.
Anyway, this article represents the next stage in the now five-year struggle to get my wife of ten years the right to live with me in Britain. She has a five-year residency card for Spain and so has the right to live and work here just as any other European citizen, including Spaniards… and that is how it should be.
I am European, and as such I have the right to bring my wife with me, even if the authorities want to know the ins and outs… We understand that, and we have complied and they have given her residency, taking a huge amount of stress off off our shoulders.
We have completed Phase Three in the scheme of things, and it took five years.
However, now we face the Fourth Phase, entry into the UK an the strength of her Spanish residency card alone. This should give her the right to ninety days in the UK, during which she nay apply for residency as my wife.
That is Phase Five.
If it fails, we will be in deep doo-dah, because under British law, my wife – the wife of British citizen of untold generations, can only have a foreign wife, if he is rich or has a good job.
At the age of sixty-three neither of those options are available to me.
We can only hope that Karma is on our side…
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and list of audiobooks
All the best,
Owen
Podcast: Moving To The UK
Returning To Old Haunts
Returning to old haunts is said to be a guaranteed disappointment, and I am wondering whether that’s true… hoping that it is not.
At least, not necessarily so…
However, instinct tells me that the saying is true… Depending on how long the gap between the visits is, I suppose.
I studied in Portsmouth in my early twenties and returned in my forties. Many buildings that had meant something to me were still there, but the atmosphere was different.
Disappointingly so… but what else should I have expected? The Wiltshire Lamb, for example, where I had worked between classes, was not full of my contemporaries – we didn’t have the same worries… the social concerns were not the same… Money is a universal, collective concern, so I mean the other things except for that.
I lived in The Netherlands, Den Bosch, for nine years, thirty-five years ago, and would love to go back, but… Would it disappoint?
I suppose there is only one way to find out…
Or is it better to go to pastures new and get more good memories and leave Den Bosch in my head as a good memory of thirty-five years ago?
And so we get to tbe point of this self-indulgence, I will have to return to the UK with my wife of fifteen years this year because of Brexit.
If we don’t go back this year, 2018, the chances are that my Asian wife will only be allowed in for a holiday. I have no idea how any government considers this acceptable, but who am I?
And then, when we get back to my home town – my wife would not consider living anywhere else since family is everything to her – it will not be the same… for me.
It can’t be. I left it fifteen years ago… friends will have died, pubs and restaurants will have closed. Hopefully, new places will have opened, but it will be like returning to an old holiday resort where I once had a good time…
It’s scary, but our only option and I am wary of returning to old haunts.
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Podcast: Returning To Old Haunts
Seratonin
My doctor put me on Seratonin about fifteen years ago. I had had armed robbers tie me up in my own house, our family firm had gone through and my father had died all within a short space of time, and I thought I was depressed. Seratonin induces the production of endorphins, which are the hormone (or chemical) that is credited with creating happy feelings in the brain.
I was rather ashamed that the doctor thought I couldn’t cope on my own, but after a few days, I told the half a dozen friends I drank with in the local pub.
“I thought you were already on them”, said one, “we all are and our wives… and most of our friends. Great, aren’t they? I look forward to my happy pill every morning!”
I had never heard of them before, but it seemed that I was the last to know.
I stopped taking them after a week, and a television documentary appeared a few days after that condemning them.
Anyway, the feeling that the Seratonin gave me is what I feel now – a slight buzz of happiness even when it is irrational.
I am happy to be going to Spain next week, but I am no longer under the illusion that being there will solve all our problems, which is what I did think last May.
Spain is/was supposed to be our springboard back into the UK, but it is far from as easy as the rulebook says it is, or as I thought it would be.
And then there’s Brexit. That could put the mockers on my wife getting into the UK completely. If Brexit puts a block on my taking my wife to the UK to live, she will need a sponsor. However, I have lost touch with all my friends after being in Thailand for thirteen years, and my I can’t rely on my family to help.
We will get to Spain, but there is a dark cloud hanging over the future further ahead than that.
If you have any suggestions, please let me know – we’re desperate.
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All the best,
Owen
PS: there are probably errors in relation to Seratonin (serotonin) in this piece, but the basic message is the same.
Podcast: Seratonin
The Dreaded Spanish Visa (part 502)
If you have not been following this tale of abject misery, it started in December 2015, with no emails to the Spanish Embassy in Bangkok receiving an answer. In May 2016, an embassy official told us not to bother going for the 180-day Schengen visa (for spouses of EU citizens), but just to apply for residency when we got there.
That didn’t work, and my wife had to leave, suffering a nervous breakdown in the process. Anyway, we tried again in November, for the same visa, and were told that we were ‘missing a few documents’. It has taken us two months to get them, so I applied for an interview yesterday. I was told that short-term visas of 90 days’ duration were available from a subcontractor. ‘No’, I replied, ‘I want the long one’.
Their reply was: ‘We don’t know what you want, and don’t think you do either’.
How sodding rude is that?
They added that they can only grant 90-day visas, but that is not what they said in May and November last year. It seems like they are just trying to wear us down until we give up. However, if that happens, or our money runs out trying, my wife and I will be separated by 11,500 km… and perhaps for ever.
It has made both of us cry several times, and, as I said before, affected my wife’s mental health. If it wasn’t so important for one of us to maintain a grip, I would go over the edge soon as well.
So, we have an appointment for the twelfth, and processing takes ten to fifteen days. My visa, which cannot be extended again, expires on the 23rd, which gives us a day’s grace.
I’m afraid that the future is not looking rosy and I am worried that that might push my wife over the edge again.
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All the best,
Owen
Podcast: The Dreaded Spanish Visa
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