Brexit Britain

Given that the UN Charter on Refugees is international law, wouldn't a government minister sanctioning actions that could break said international law be putting themselves at risk of a trip to The Hague?

 

The last time I was there it was flooded.

 

I’m not a lawyer, but that’s possibly true.

 

They'd probably welcome that development. Gives them more fuel to chuck on the "foreigners meddling with our sovereignty" culture war bonfire

 

Let's just say my colleagues and I won't be accepting the offer of immunity from the law.
I'm not a Nazi stormtrooper, I won't be giving orders to push boats back. I'm not going to be part of a new Nuremburg trial.

 

I've worked out that I have to dumb down some basic spellings for the Donny audience haha..

 

Course.
Same as you had to dumb down your understanding of entry requirements in the face of mountains of evidence last week.

etc etc.

it’s nice; but now you’ve put so much effort into pretending to be as thick as pigs hit, you could now put some effort into proving you were only pretending

 

We’re doing that too. We fixed for 10 years 3 years ago, so a higher interest (2.64%) than for smaller fixes but it’s a monthly amount we’re happy with and there’ll be no nasty surprises with it. We’re overpaying 10% each year with the hope that, as the final years will be very small amounts, we’ll have enough saved to clear the remaining balance once the fix ends. It’s a bit crazy and it was an incredibly difficult year 1 but we’re managing it so far by living extremely frugally.

 

ive taken a different route. Pay as little as possible while I’m young (ish) enjoy the cash I’ve got now. Fixed at 1.09%. I could overpay, and by doing so I’d save money later on but I don’t really care about having loads of cash when I’m old… just don’t tell the kids lol

 

Depending on how crippling your early redemption penalty is it might be worth looking at remortgaging now, rates are currently a lot lot lower than 2.64% and remortgaging might be cheaper overall

 

Rates are much lower, it’s true, but I like knowing that it’s fixed until we’ve paid it off. It means that I know for a fact what our payments will always be and that brings me comfort.

 

I wasn't meaning move to a variable rate, I was meaning a new fixed deal at a lower rate

 

I won’t be old, it should be gone by the time I’m 40 I’m not bothered about having loads of cash full stop, I just absolutely hate being in debt and want to get it gone. I’m willing to scrimp until that happens.

 

I like the ten years though. I’d consider at 5 years swapping to a new 5 year fix but then you’ve got to arse about going through the whole process again. We’ve got a plan we’re happy with and we’re fine with it costing a bit more. We’re still saving around £80k paying it off early.

 

We did this and it smashed years off our mortgage and by time we were 45 were mortgage free, this has offered us opportunities that we couldn’t afford when younger and still young enough to enjoy.

 

We’ve completed 3 years of overpaying 10% and so far we’ve knocked 10 years 3 months off the term and saved £36,486.42 in interest even if we never overpay another penny. The aim is to knock 20 years off and about 80k in interest.

It’s been hard to stick to at times, especially as whilst Will wasn’t furloughed, unlike almost everyone else at his work, they did permanently end his out of hours support at the start of the first lockdown which means £250 base rate less a month plus £30 an hour call out for X amount of hours. The first year, other than bills, we were living off whatever money I got from doing online surveys and freebies from cashback grocery apps such as CheckoutSmart and Shopmium. We also dropped down to one car and stopped holidaying. It gets easier as the 10% falls each year though and we’ve had a few promotions.

 

Sounds like a pretty miserable way of life. I hope it pays dividends for you in the long run.

 

It keeps life entertaining! I’ve never cared for material things, they just doesn’t interest me at all. I’m not going to pretend the first year was fun… although having a new house was exciting. We both absolutely hate being in debt and this year has already been a lot easier as the amount falls and we’re fully accustomed to a cheaper way of life now. You live to your means and all that. I think that next year we won’t even notice the effect and it’ll just keep getting better. Having kids would cost more!