A slight make over…

Four months down the line, I’ve given the blog a small makeover – and will be looking forward not back…

The original tagline of this blog addressed my disenfranchisement as a Briton who had lived outside the United Kingdom for over 15 years and had look his democratic right to vote – it was “The view of a British citizen ineligible to vote in the UK Referendum on EU membership”.


In the aftermath, I rapidly confined the blog to mothballs as the Referendum had been and gone, even if the aftermath will rumble on for years. A comment on my Facebook page for the blog commented that the blog looked somewhat funereal – and that I might like to give it a makeover and focus on the ongoing situation. Four months on, I decided that the time is right to move the blog on, buoyed somewhat with the 50,000 reads it has attracted so far.

Recently I have had some contact with others planning on taking Austrian citizenship – from talking with them, I have realised that I have to take the pragmatic approach and not hope for some seemingly ever more slim chance of waking up from a bad dream that the UK has decided not to push forward for Brexit, with Boris Johnson as our Foreign Minister under Theresa May as Prime Minister. The one small mercy is that the treacherous Michael Gove is no longer a cabinet minister.

The removal of the “15-year rule” – a case of too little too late

Votes for life due to be rolled out – too little too late.

On Friday, 7 October, there was a monumental announcement from the cabinet office, namely that the 15 year rule, which was the rule that had prevented me and countless others from voting in the UK Referendum on Membership of the EU, would be ditched and that there would be “votes for life” for Britons abroad. Continue reading “The removal of the “15-year rule” – a case of too little too late”