wish I could afford one

This. I can imagine what the global competitors have in the O of their SWOT analyses these days.

No they're not. Good businesses do not increase their inventories they constantly work to reduce them. Even if they wanted to where are they going to put all these inventories? Under tarps in the car park?

Inconvenient and routine? A number of businesses that run on tight margins and/or have high material costs will be bankrupt...

Sounds like a great idea... What happens when they then go cash flow negative? In any business cash is king. The aim is to reduce working capital not increase it. Meanwhile their global competitors keep working on their business efficiency.

Yep and the proles don't even notice they're becoming globally a lot poorer as each day progresses. We already had our HPC. I wrote about it in early 2013. It's just unfortunate that those much loved strivers weren't invited to the party.

So you're expecting every business that could be greatly affected by Brexit to expend precious resources (people and money) on trying to second guess what might happen and then put processes in place to deal with all those what ifs? Personally, I think a better option would be for our politicians to grow a pair and make some decisions for the betterment of the country vs themselves and their party. That way those said businesses can use their precious resources to figure out how better to take on their now very global competition. Then if they have any left after that they might want to return some of it in the form of dividends to the shareholders, which includes our pension funds.

Agreed. The UK could have controlled immigration by simply implementing the rules that were available. They chose not to. I've just jumped through those hoops to retire early in Cyprus so escaped just in time - prove self sufficient income wise, prove you have somewhere to live, prove you're spending in the country and prove you have self funded healthcare to name four requirements. Instead we end up in a situation where the drawbridge is pulled up firmly on the proles trapping them in the UK. No retirement, early or otherwise, on the Med for most of you. Meanwhile our popular Brexiteers will of course have full EU freedoms if and when they so desire. Money talks...

Plenty of free sunlight so why they're not going all out with desalination plants run from solar PV farms is beyond me.

I'm just continuing to do what I've been doing for the last 10 years or so. Buy (not much of that anymore now that I'm early retired)/hold/rebalance a low expense portfolio covering multiple asset classes across multiple countries. I'm down 5% year to date. Still a few days for it to get worse, go sideways or get better.

I'm racing for EU residence now. Have FIRE'd and moved to the Med a couple of weeks ago. Have my immigration registration interview confirmed for early February 2019 so will make it before Brexit day (if it happens). Know all the criteria I need to meet and am pulling together the docs including proving I can support myself, have medical insurance, can bury myself and have somewhere to live to name but 4. There's a few other criteria as well. Once I have my registration I should be golden and keep my EU rights going forward.

Give me a chance. Now FIREd and will be gone in a few days...

Self, party, country in that order...

How about this official https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/draft_withdrawal_agreement_0.pdf

Interesting comment German politician Hans-Olaf Henkel - "So I think what they could specifically do is now offer Britain a new deal. That deal has to be more autonomy for controlling British immigration." Maybe a vote on WA or Remain with a bit of cake...

It's already been pretty toxic at times and they haven't deleted it yet...

I don't understand how the DUP could be unhappy though... Under this doesn't NI benefit from being the only place with frictionless access to the EU and UK markets. Couldn't that give them the opportunity to attract industry from both the EU and UK where both markets are sold into? NI the global industrial power house...

But the DUP don't like it - "...the party's Sammy Wilson says "it's a poor deal, a bad deal, and a deal that the prime minister said she would not accept.""

I guess it gives this thread a chance of making it to 5,000 pages... ?

£ back over 1.30 to the $ and over 1.15 to the EUR...

As early retirees in Cyprus we need to take out private health insurance. We'll minimise the annual costs of that with an excess and then pay as you go for GP visits etc. They cost about EUR30 a visit. If we had have stayed in the EU (and of course depending on the deal or no deal it could remain) then once we achieved State Pension age we could have applied for the S1 to get free state healthcare in Cyprus like a Cypriot national but which is really paid for by the UK AIUI. Flip it on it's head and an early EU27 retiree coming to the UK would get free NHS treatment as it's based on residency. The UK government could have easily sorted this problem but chose not to. An easy example that would have helped with costs is free NHS is available to permanent residents and not just residents. The EU doesn't prescribe what you have to do it just says you have to treat all EU citizens equally.

No, the EHIC is for travel to other EU countries. If you're a UK pensioner living in an EU27 country pre-Brexit you need to complete what is called an S1 form.

The latest anecdotal I have was that the hot water storage tank scaled up so badly that the water actually stopped flowing. We stayed at the complaints by following the documented process which eventually leads to you being able to get it fixed yourself and so managed to get a new tank within a few weeks. The hilarious piece was that they replaced it with a tank 1/3 of the size of what was there. I didn't bother pushing back as we were giving notice in a couple of weeks. The Real Estate agent who then came to photograph the place "asked how the shower was". I replied with "it's ok provided you're quick" as I opened the door to show the tank. Even he rolled his eyes. We'll be sure to point this out to any punters who look at the place while we're still present although given the monthly rent they want it might be empty for a while.

Why are they so against licensing? Licensing is just about ensuring minimum standards are met and as professional business people surely they want to protect their investment by keeping their assets in a condition far above the minimum. I know in the business I work planned predictable maintenance is essential from a business continuity perspective.

I also love the 'invest overseas' comment. Firstly, buying housing with huge amounts of debt is not an investment. Buying a home 100% with cash could be considered an investment. Instead, it's a leveraged gamble on interest rate direction and government policy. Those that got in early have ended up on black. The question is will the current lot end up on black or red. Secondly, how would they 'buy' overseas. Who's going to give them the debt?

Hey GB. It's a little more subtle compared with writing lots of zero's. ? I also have a fair bit of cash sitting around (17.8%) at the moment in readiness for the Med home purchase. Every month I see it being devalued via inflation and it frustrates the sh*t out of me. Post the home purchase I want 3 years living expenses in cash only which will hopefully help me ride out the eventual crash/es vs this blip we've seen so far. Up until now I've rarely had to sell anything to rebalance as I've been able to continually use new money to buy the worst performing asset class. Looking back at my records my last sale (as opposed to move from expensive work pension wrapper to low cost SIPP) was VOD back in January 2014 and that was because of their sale of Verizon and all the tax palaver that was going to go with it rather than a rebalance. That's about to change as I enter to drawdown so I expect to eventually use my other rebalancing criteria which is I will rebalance when any asset class has declined or increased by 25% of nominal asset class percentage. So if I’m say wanting to hold 20% UK Equities I’ll rebalance when they either exceed 25% by value or are below 15% by value. I really don't like churn as that's one of the ways our financial services 'friends' make their money - buy/sell spreads and trading fees...