7 ms·

I'll move to London in about one month from Berlin, because YOLO and they will have a deal anyways. In addition, those Brexit fears are overblown. UK leaves EU

• romanovcode 9y ago
  Can I ask why you decided to move from one of the cheapest startup-cities in EU to the most expensive one?
• taway_1212 9y ago
  When you moved to US/Canada/Norway etc., you have secured your right to be there. Meanwhile, (depending on the details), Brexit can take away your right to work/stay in the UK.
• Boothroid 9y ago
  I think the FUD is overdone also - whilst the UK has its problems, it is a wealthy, advanced nation and still an important part of the global economy, and will still have plenty going for it outside the EU.
• m_t 9y ago
  > Was it a consideration in your decision? Yes, it was a very big part of my decision when moving to London that I didn't need a Visa to work here, contrary to the country I was residing in before. Yes it was a big part of my decision that I was free to change job, that I wasn't linked to an employer, that I didn't need to renew said visa it every X year, that my spouse could work with the same rights as me, etc.
• dagw 9y ago
  UK leaves EU and apparently it's doomsday. UK leaving the EU isn't the main problem. UK leaving the EU in such a bizarrely unstructured and chaotic way without any plan in place is the problem.
  • mi100hael 9y ago
    How would one leave the EU if not via well-publicized popular vote and subsequent wind-down period? People only think it's chaotic and without plan because they assumed the vote wouldn't pass.
    • pjc50 9y ago
      People assume it's without a plan because there isn't a plan. It's still not clear what the government actually wants out of Brexit, and there were at least two Leave campaigns with very different and mostly fictional manifestoes.
    • perlgeek 9y ago
      The leaving party should have well thought-out positions for the exit negotiation. What happens to EU citizens living the in the country that wants to leave, and vice versa? What kind of international agreements and contracts should replace what the EU provides? What about obligations to retirement funds of (former) EU employees? There's a myriad of other questions to discuss, and given the number of states involved, two years is a very short time frame to settle them. The reporting I heard about the current brexit negotiations might be biased, but I get the impress that the British government doesn't even seem to have well-defined positions on most of these issues, which slows down the negotiations.
    • zimablue 9y ago
      No, it's because our civil service did no planning for this (in fact were explicitly not allowed to), have no infrastructure or skilled employees to negotiate it, and are fighting a constant battle of trying to inject the economic reality of Brexit into the heads of our MPs who refuse to hear it for political reasons. You can be for or against Brexit but if the rulers are pretending that it's not going to hurt if we lose trade access then we are in big trouble. Source - I know a civil servant who worked on EU stuff.
• danmaz74 9y ago
  Do you realize the difference that just visas and work permits make?
  • Jdam 9y ago
    Yes I do. But I also know that if I commit to something, applying for a visa is an effort that's acceptable. Some years ago, I wanted to go to the US for a while and guess what - I got a visa and made it work.
    • dagw 9y ago
      Obviously there will still be lots of people who are committed to move to London and they will still move to London. The interesting thing will be what people who have gotten equally interesting job offers in several different cities and with no strong preference between the cities will do.
• BjoernKW 9y ago
  The key difference is exactly that those have never been part of the EU. The problem isn't so much that the UK is leaving the EU but that the current government as well as other prominent Brexit figures don't have the foggiest idea how they're going to proceed. They have neither vision nor plan (other than "strong and stable", whatever that's supposed to mean) and that's quite a bit unsettling. The UK hasn't been conducting its own trade negotiations for decades now. They neither have the time nor the personnel required for having trade agreements in place by the time the UK is supposed to leave the EU if everything goes according to plan. It's not even clear if the UK can - as is commonly stated - easily fall back to WTO rules in case no agreement comes to pass because while the UK is member of the WTO that membership currently is contingent on its EU membership. So, while Brexit might not spell doomsday for the UK this completely haphazard approach of dealing with it doesn't exactly bode well either.
  • Jdam 9y ago
    > They have neither vision nor plan (other than "strong and stable", whatever that's supposed to mean) Sounds exactly what my current government (Merkel) is successfully doing for years now.
    • dagw 9y ago
      The difference is that Merkel's main plan is to keep Germany plodding along more or less the path it's already on while May's goal is to head full speed off the path they're own, into the woods, and hoping that they'll find a new path on the other side.
    • dx034 9y ago
      But Germany doesn't have to negotiate with other countries, they only have to coordinate within the EU.
• perlgeek 9y ago
  > Did it ever matter to anyone who considered a move there, that US/Canada/Norway/Israel/Australia/NZ/Switzerland/.. has never been part thereof? The difference is that all those countries have lots of international agreements that make trade and travel rather easy. The UK doesn't have that many international contracts with other EU states directly, because such matters have been handled by the EU. A "hard" brexit would throw back such matters by more than twenty years, and concern many of UK's most important trading partners.
• keiferski 9y ago
  Any thoughts on London vs. Berlin? I've considered one or the other from time to time.