MrsWuh

Does the EU protect us from raining cows then? Wow - if only Cameron had told us that last year!

It is important. What makes you think these companies won't be able to keep exporting into the EU?

Except it's not free, is it? It costs us around £10billion pounds a year net just to belong to the club, never mind all the other costs associated with membership. You do realise we will still be able to trade with Europe and buy raw materials from them, right?! We don't need a free trade deal to be able to do business within the EU. Tariffs work both ways. And, what's more, we will be free to make up our own rules to attract investment to the UK and away from Europe...

You are confusing two different things. The UK forming, scrapping or amending its own regulations as we see fit. And the EU forming, scrapping or amending their regulations as they see fit. Why would we need to influence EU regulations? We won't be bound by them any more - that's the point. Do we influence US regulations? Or Australian regulations? No, we just accept what they do, adjust accordingly and get on with it - and it will be exactly the same with the EU.

And we can vote May out. No-one is obliged to vote for the Tories just because the opposition is weak. But the Tories are not 'extreme-right' and never have been. If they are moving further to the right now and gaining support for it, it's because they are taking advantage of a shift back in that direction by the electorate. That is also democracy. The MEPs don't make policy. The EU Commission proposes and drafts new laws, and implements and enforces EU laws that have been passed. All the MEPs do is agree to the proposals or reject them. The Commissioners are nominated by member states but not elected by the people of Europe. We can't vote them out, any more than we can vote out over 90% of the MEPs. Now this is fine if you concur with the idea of a European superstate, along the lines of the US. If you see yourself as European first and foremost, and Britain as a bit-part cog in a huge machine, then it is quite possible that you are happy to sacrifice British needs for the greater good, whatever the EU decides the 'greater good' should be. That's your prerogative. But the fact is that most British people do not think like that - and that includes a huge chunk of people who voted Remain. All the parties know that, which is precisely why they had to keep negotiating opt-outs and rebates and 'picking and choosing' rules. It's all very well saying that the UK should abide by all the rules of the club - Euro, Schengen and all - but the inevitable consequence would still be Brexit, just by an even greater margin!

So there you go. We don't need to be in the EU to have the same standards. But if we decide they are superfluous or having unintended consequences, we will be able to scrap them or amend them if we so wish. So tell me again... why do we need to be in the EU?

Campaign for PR then. I live in a safe Tory seat as well and I don't vote Tory. You'll just have to grin and bear it until enough of the population agrees with you and wants to change things - that's democracy. Now you know how the Eurosceptics felt for 40 years! How would you propose changing EU law if the British people didn't agree with it, but a majority of the other countries did? 73 MEPs out of 751 aren't going to change anything, and that's the maximum number of votes the UK can have. That's the EU restraint I feel most strongly about - and that's where the lack of control comes in. Far-right groups are on the rise across Europe. People tend to take EU elections more lightly than national ones and use them as a protest - witness UKIP's victory in 2014. How would you feel if these right-wing groups gained a majority in the EU Parliament and started passing extremist laws you didnt agree with? How would you feel, knowing that these laws would be imposed on the UK even if 100% of the British people flatly disagreed with them - and knowing there was absolutely nothing we could do about it? My instinct is that you would be screaming for Brexit at the top of your voice. But either you agree with the concept of the EU superstate or you don't. You can't just keep voting your country in or out depending on whether you happen to agree with the current mindset of the EU Parliament. I don't want my country ruled by 27 others in their own interests rather than our own. Simple as that.

Only 8% of British businesses trade with the EU. Why should the other 92% have to worry about EU regulations? Most of them are small businesses. They don't have to worry about US regulations if they don't trade with the US, or Australian regulations if they don't trade with Australia. But the EU is able to impose all kinds of restrictions on them. Nothing is stopping businesses from trading with the EU and sticking to their regulations if they have to - why drag everyone else into the net too?

Well if the British people don't like it, they can always vote the Tories out. And there's the beauty of Brexit in a nutshell.

British political parties will propose the optimum temperature of the bath in their manifestos, and the British people will pick accordingly. They will not need to wait while 27 other countries sit about debating what they think the British bath temperature should be. Ummm... not sure what the second point was all about. ??? Only businesses trading with the EU would need to comply with EU regulations. The other 92% of British businesses will no longer have to be restrained by red tape invented by some bored, over-paid, unelected pen-pusher in Brussels.

Wow - which bank was that? Was it a long time ago? And do you think that was quite usual, or are you a banker's extra-special, super-loaded dream client that they were desperate to nab?!

Thank you all for your replies they're really helpful. We know we're gambling on the value of the pound going up but it's being hammered now by the uncertainty over Brexit. Once that's sorted and the dust has settled, we're pretty confident the pound will improve. We know about the interest rates being higher in Australia as well - we were doing calcuations based on a 5% interest rate? But our annual income will be up by the equivalent of £12,000 a year and I'm hoping to go back to work as well, so we should be OK there. BrokerByTheBeach, we do have permanent residents' visas. My husband has been a teacher for 21 years, so the continuation of industry is there. If we sell our UK house, a 20% deposit will be no problem. I must admit I haven't scanned the small print of my husband's job offer, but he hasn't mentioned having a probationary period. Are there any lenders you would recommend that might be willing to take us on? NicF, how did you get a mortgage after six weeks? That's fantastic! I love the idea of building our own house, but the reality would scare me witless! Skani, thank you for reassuring me over Kingston Beach and Blackman's Bay. At the moment we live outside London near Stansted Airport, and the congestion is a nightmare. It takes my husband an hour or more to travel 18 miles into work. We regularly get stuck in traffic jams going to the supermarket 2 miles away. Getting away from it is the major reason why we picked living in Tasmania over anywhere else - surely the congestion in Hobart cannot compare to where we are now?! (I'm going to need to get used to thinking in kilometres instead of miles, aren't I? Oh heck...!)

Wherever we rent to start is where we are likely to end up because, having pulled three children out of school in the UK, we really wouldn't want to get them settled in Australia and then be forced to pull them out again. We will just have to make sure we've done our research before we get over there. (At the moment we are keen on Blackman's Bay and Kingston Beach, so if anyone knows any deep dark secrets about those areas please pass them on!) Oh well - thank you for answering my question. Looks like renting is unavoidable... or maybe we should just invest in a camper van for three months?!

We are moving to Tassie at the beginning of September. If we manage to sell our house in the UK, we'll have around £400,000 in equity. We don't really want to transfer all that over to Aussie dollars while the exchange rate is so bad. On the other hand, we don't much fancy renting either. So we were wondering whether it would be preferable to get a mortgage in Tasmania, using just some of the equity as a deposit, and then paying it off once the exchange rate has picked up and we can transfer the rest of the money over. My husband is a teacher and he has a permanent job lined up in a Hobart school as a Head of Department. So we will have a regular income pretty much straight away. His UK contract doesn't end until 31st August, so his employment record will scarcely have any gap at all between jobs. I know our credit score won't count over there, but we thought we'd get copies anyway to reassure any lenders. We are going to open an Australian bank account and start saving into it every month before we go. And, of course, we'll have a huge wodge of cash sitting around in a foreign bank account. Will it be possible to get a mortgage agreed in Australia before we go out there or soon after, or will it take months before the banks will trust us with their money? (Please don't tell me that it's best to rent to begin with - I know, I know!) Many thanks!

Hi Elaine, I think it really depends on how much support your son needs. Australia seems to offer a very extensive (and expensive) early intervention service for children under 7 with ASD - I think it's something like up to $6,000 a year to spend on various types of therapy. So you might stand a better chance if you wait until your son is too old to qualify for that financial assistance, as it's obviously going to represent a huge chunk of the permitted costs over 5 years. Even if you don't intend to use it, they will still take it into account if your son is eligible for it. My son wasn't diagnosed until he was almost 7 and he has improved a lot since then. I don't know whether he would have got through the process at that point, because he was in a pretty bad way psychologically after being bullied at school - chewing everything in sight, literally tearing out his hair in clumps, nightmares, meltdowns. A few years of TLC and more understanding from his schools after diagnosis have made so much difference to him that we barely recognise him from the report made at the time of diagnosis. He still has occasional bouts of peculiar behaviour, but nothing like he used to. Because he's so much older than your son, it's easier for professionals to assess how likely he is to live an independent life as an adult and make a judgement on that basis. Plus he doesn't receive any additional support at school which really helps. And he's only got a few years left at school now anyway, of course. Obviously I don't know how affected your son is by the ASD. Again, if he improves as much as my son did in a few years, you may find it easier to get him through the medical a little later when it's clearer how his condition will affect his ability to cope at mainstream school. If it helps, the agent we used was Go Matilda. When we first contacted them we didn't even think to mention my son's autism - most of his problems occur at school in social situations, but he's fine at home. His funny ways are just a part of who he is and, to us if not everyone else, that's his 'normal' setting. So we were going for the visa all guns blazing, when I started to see these little threads on the forums and realised rather belatedly that the autism might be a problem. My husband phoned Go Matilda and they were very reassuring and relaxed and just said it would be fine and not to worry. Of course we DID worry - incessantly for months! - but they turned out to be right in the end. Good luck with whatever decision you make - hope it goes well for you all! L. x