Not quite. The Schengen agreement is not so much about rights but about the practical aspects of travel.
You can travel freely inside the Schengen zone.
If you enter the Schengen zone from outside, then you have to show that you meet the requirements. For example, any EU/EEA citizenship will do. You don’t have to be a “Schengen citizen”. No fees, no visa, no prior notice. You show up with your passport - or, if you are from a commienazi country, your ID card - and that’s it.
After Brexit Irish citizens will still live outside the Schengen zone and they will still be allowed to enter the Schengen zone as they please as long as they can prove that they are indeed Irish (or other EU) citizens.
In the absence of any special deal UK citizens would lose that privilege. So they could be subject to a Euro-ESTA system, required to apply in advance, pay fees etc.
I’m planning to move my family to Belgium this winter. I was surprised how easy it is to set up temporary residency and work permits. It’s just paperwork. I was expecting to need my employer to push, and that wasn’t necessary at all.
If you can afford to do all that, then you can probably afford to weather 4-8 years with a shitty president. It’ll be the people who don’t have the option of leaving who’ll cop it worst.
There’s never been a dim-witted, thuggish right-wing authoritarian with an open contempt for the rule of law, and bigoted, xenophobic ideas who’s won in the US before, but everywhere else it’s been tried people who got out early fared better. If he wins, the US wouldn’t be my country anymore and I’d be a foreigner here even if I didn’t move.
Also I’d like an excuse to move to somewhere I’d have the chance to spot almost every species of tanager, be able to wake up to the sounds of howler monkeys and green macaws, be able to spot motmots, toucans, and toucanets, and spot leatherback and green sea turtles through the nesting season over more than a vacation timeframe. I’d like to move there anyway, so Trump would be a helpful push.
They aren’t called howlers for nothing. I loved hearing them, but I was a good distance away, so it wasn’t loud. Everywhere I stayed I was only near the white-faced monkeys and made day trips to find the howler monkeys. And I found them.
The macaws are actually remarkably loud too (and they don’t exactly sing, but squawk), though they were noisier flying home in the evenings, and I cannot ever complain about hearing a wild macaw. Also, there are sloths there. Sloths. And banana-stealing squirrels. And the honeycreepers. The honeycreepers were my faves along with the tanagers. I really, really need to go back.
While I wish everyone the best (and as a Brit abroad, hope for the best), I can’t imagine other countries being as welcoming if the shit hit the fan and Americans or Brits started trying to permanently scatter into the world like spores. I’m sure Costa Rica would be happy to accept a few Americans, but not the tens of thousands who would want to go if a significant number of people felt that life in the US had become intolerable.
Things would have to start looking pretty grim before I would consider bailing. ‘Grim’ as in an absolutely certain trajectory towards authoritarian. A packed Supreme Court. Effective dissolution of the balance of powers. Grassroots nationalism. That kind of thing.
One thing I can say for certain: if Trump is declared winner, I’m going to the nearest store for a pack of Camels. And I don’t even smoke.
Oh, sorry everyone, I forgot to mention that Costa Rica is a hideously terrible place to move. Do not even consider it for a moment. It’s just terrible. You’ll be woken by howler monkeys at 4 AM every morning, and those pesky macaws will screech at you. Also there are way too many birds. And the sea turtles will all give you this look of slow withering contempt. Also they only have two seasons, the dry season and the rainy mosquito infested season of malarial despair.
Still lovely for a vacation, but don’t let that fool you. And Americans, if it’s your homeland, you don’t want to leave. Think of patriotism and stay to vote the bums out.
Jackson was close. Maybe not dim-witted, and “right wing” doesn’t have any meaning pertaining to that era, but certainly thuggish, contemptuous, bigoted, and xenophobic.
Ah. I thought this might be like a service rank which you do not give up after quitting office. Plus I was not sure he had actually gone for good. I have just been a-Googling and it seems you are right. Ordinary MPs loose the MP title when they leave office. Ministers appointed by the Sovereign and keep the ‘Right Hon’ title after they leave office. The Prime Minister is also appointed by the Sovereign.
Remember that a huge number of us didn’t vote to leave - the vote couldn’t have been much further from unanimous.
It’s members of the Privy Council, rather than ministers.
The PM is appointed by the sovereign, but doesn’t get to keep the title forever. So John Major is now ‘The Right Honourable Sir John Major KG CH’ i.e. ‘Member of the Privy Council Sir John Major, Knight of the Order of the Garter, Companion of Honour’. He’s known colloquially as ‘former Prime Minister John Major’, but that’s not a title.
Plus MPs only have the title of MP when Parliament exists. In other words, in the run-up to a general election when Parliament has been dissolved and a new one has not yet been elected, there are no MPs- and the BBC does not put the letters MP after the names of ministers or other members of the previous Parliament when interviewing them during this period.
All true. Probably, all true. I my mind I was addressing the aforementioned steaming twit as I last saw him on the TV, going into Number 10, humming the Imperial March…
