I was talking to a British judge and some of his friends over the apero as one does, about what in general Brits in this area were planning to do after Brexit. There are quite a few of them as can be seen by the queues at the mobile fish and chip wagon on a Thursday night. Most are retired or semi retired. It seems to break down to 40% applying for permanent residence, 40% returning to the UK and 20% applying for French Nationality, which I thought was a little high. It seemed ironic to me that prominent Brexiteer Lord Lawson has applied for permanent residence in France if we are so terribly undemocratic.
The judge replied that I would be surprised by how many of the leading Brexiteers had their get out of jail free cards ready in case it all goes wrong. Nigel Farrage has a Swedish wife and could move there, Ghisla Stuart could of course regain German Nationality, Kate Houey (I hope I spelled her name right) can claim Irish heritage, even Boris is thought to have a claim on more than one other nationality should he need it.
I thought the judge was being a bit cynical and said so. He replied that he was not cynical just jealous because the nearest he could get was an Italian great grandparent, and that was not good enough to claim Italian nationality as a matter of right.
By the way Peter before you reclaim your Czech citizenship:) I would like to thank you for facilitating this fun thread, it seems to me that it has enabled posters on both sides of the argument to get their points across in a very civil and informative , manner especially as I am being told by my British neighbours that many UK families are no longer speaking to each other because of the emotions stirred over how they voted.
Do the Brits in Spain really think they will get chucked out?
The real reason they might want to go back would be for the more generous health service provision (so I am told). That gets to be more relevant as one gets older, unless one has money, and most of the Brits who moved to Spain don’t have a huge amount of money. Especially those found at a fish and chip wagon 
Those I knew personally who have gone there did so for the warm air (helps with the joints) and the much cheaper alcohol
One of the favorite lying headlines I saw in the Express while getting my lunch once was “EU banning British kettles” with a bunch of frothing about how the EU wants to destroy British tradition, the cup of tea etc. etc. I went and looked up what the EU was really doing. The proposed directive was to set a standard that limited the time it took a kettle to reach the boil and turn off (to save electricity) and reliability standards for small appliances to reduce waste. I guess in the view of the Daily Express, wasting electricity and queueing up to return faulty appliances are important British traditions that the monstrous EU is killing off…
The fake news anyway often mirrors “Yes Minister”, the Eurosausage episode and the ID card episodes were both great examples of how in real life stuff gets spun for political gain.
I wish I really understood what the editors and owners of the right wing press think that they are going to gain, politically or financially, from Brexit.
One of the favorite lying headlines I saw in the Express while getting my lunch once was “EU banning British kettles” with a bunch of frothing about how the EU wants to destroy British tradition, the cup of tea etc. etc. I went and looked up what the EU was really doing. The proposed directive was to set a standard that limited the time it took a kettle to reach the boil and turn off (to save electricity) and reliability standards for small appliances to reduce waste.
I don’t think any educated person would believe the EU wanted to ban kettles, but setting a maximum time to reach the boiling temperature does look very much like somebody looking for a regulation to create for the sake of it.
The electricity is all converted into heat, and this goes mostly into heating the water no matter how fast or how slow it runs. Doing it quickly reduces the heat losses from the kettle a little bit but let’s do a quick calculation of the specific heat capacity of water, the amount of energy needed to raise say 1 litre from +20C to +95C, and the heat losses can be measured easily enough by boiling a kettle and measuring how fast it cools.
One could get an estimate of the heat losses by looking at the curvature of the temperature rise. In a lossless kettle this would be a straight line assuming there is no boiling i.e. no losses via latent heat of evaporation but that would need a pressurised kettle.
I reckon this “efficiency” proposition via faster heating is almost total bollocks It probably came from somebody who never did physics at school.
A kettle is already limited to 13A (in the UK, via the plug fuse rating) which is 3kW and that is right at the top end of what you want. You end up with a thick and clumsy mains cable. The Breville one here is labelled “2500-3000W”. The effect of the regulation is probably just to mandate all kettles to 3kW.
A better approach, IF one wants to create a regulation to save energy, is to mandate better insulation for the kettle.
You misunderstood that. It is the time lag from the water boiling till it switches off. Some kettles can take very long to turn off when the water is boiling.
Timothy – you refer to the “right wing press” but it seems you would be better talking about the press in general and the BBC specifically because they all have an “axe to grind”, it is just so much more obvious in some sections, as I said, the BBC as a prime example.
Shall you emigrate to EU land when we finally leave in accordance with our democratic right?
You misunderstood that. It is the time lag from the water boiling till it switches off. Some kettles can take very long to turn off when the water is boiling.
Surely there are bigger fish to fry in the known universe?
Fenland_Flyer wrote:
Shall you emigrate to EU land
Canada is favourite. Summer in Toronto, Winter in Vancouver.
Timothy wrote:
I wish I really understood what the editors and owners of the right wing press think that they are going to gain, politically or financially, from Brexit.
Are you referring to the Murdoch’s, or do you have other Baron’s in mind?
