Y8 D30

Whoo boy did I sleep! I woke up at 5 and said meh. Didn't think I'd fall back to sleep for two hours but who cares! It's a Saturday, I am all alone, and I have nothing to do. Screw it. Sleep is good. I did a lot yesterday and earned my sleep.

My day started off with me working on that class for Westfield. Got it finished around 10. Of course there turned out to be no rush because nothing in the UK was happening yesterday. They had their hands full with dealing with the aftermath of their exit voting. I got into a discussion about it with a friend. He was mocking all the people who know nothing of the EU or the UK and how they were all overreacting about it. His comment was along the lines of 'relax, Europe isn't descending into chaos people'. My response was:

While chaos may be a strong word, England in particular *will* suffer from this decision. The pound has already experienced (as of earlier today) a 70% drop against the dollar as well as the Euro taking a huge hit in the markets. London's standing as a major financial player is in flux as a result.

I know from my perspective, it is impacting our business, because as the pound continues to deflate, our international customers will be harder pressed to use us. Prior to this we had a strong set of UK customers because of the pound being in their favor. We have already had a couple call us saying that there may be changes in future contracts.

So no, not chaos, but the long term economic and labor issues will be seen across all of the UK. There is also a strong chance that Scotland will vote again on leaving the UK in order to join the EU as a sovereign nation. That will further destabilize England and could lead to Ireland voting to leave.

It will be interesting to see how the next decade changes England, the UK and Europe in general.

That led to more discussion about how everything will be fine in six months and everyone is being stupid to which I replied:

I disagree that things will be the same in six months. The long term drop and faith of the greater world with respect to the pound will have much longer effects. I do agree you can't base things on a day to day, but this will take much longer than a quarter or six months to right itself. Like (Mutual Friend),  I am hearing from people I know personally who do business in or with the UK and thanks to the exchange rate it's causing an issue. People who are now in the short term going to be unable to pay bills or housing because monies they had calculated has changed. Companies that had bookings and future plans based on revenue dollars are going to be hit.

(Mutual Friend) is also right that the majority of people in the western world will see no difference. If you don't travel or do business within the UK, then it's not going to impact your life. For those of us who do however, it is a big deal.

As part of the EU it was easy to work between different countries and come and go without major hassle. Now that is going to (in the long term) probably have an impact. ESPECIALLY if Ireland and Scotland choose to vote themselves out of the UK and back into the EU.

As part of xenophobia and the protection of assets by an elite upper class, the nationalists have swayed many of the fearful faithful into making a decision they won't have to live with as long as those who voted against leaving. Look at the poll numbers - 75% of people under 30 voted to Remain while older people out of fear and who knows what else voted to Leave. They will be long dead before the dust settles on those who remain.

So the last I read was the pound is seriously down, Cameron is resigning, and many people under the age of 50 are very very unhappy. I am glad I am not traveling over there any time soon.

In addition to all that, I rented a carpet cleaner and got the carpets done. That was my big goal for the day and I achieved it. Around 3 I undertook a second project - rearranging the kitchen. I boxed up a bunch of stuff we don't use, put some stuff together for B's cousin who is moving here in August, made extra room, and all in all reorganized the kitchen cabinets and pantry to make it useful. That took me quite a while. I didn't finish until after 6.

For dinner I made a nice NY steak with pasta salad. Watched a little tv, then played some video games. I am currently playing one of the old games I got - Icewind Dale II. These are games I bought when they came out (IWD, Baldur's Gate, NWN) but never finished. Now, I am finishing them! I finished Planescape already and am into Chapter 2 on IWD. I would like to see if I can finish it before B comes home. See my big plans for today?

It's supposed to start getting hotter here the next couple of days. I may need to bring that AC unit up from the garage that I got last weekend. I haven't done anything with it because I don't think it's going to work in this window, but if it gets hot enough, I will make it work.

That's about it. Long ass post today even without the EU commentary.