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Vote ban: our interest in UK never ends

I have seen a number of correspondents ask why we should object to losing the right to vote in the UK.

This is a right, hard-won over centuries of struggle and then arbitrarily taken away after a period. If some are happy with this, the thin end of the wedge, then I am not.

Apart from the principle involved, on a practical level many of us are still interested in what happens in the land of our birth and the decisions made there still affect us, sometimes profoundly.

Brexit is the paramount example. Eligibility for UK bank accounts, pensions and how to receive them also spring to mind.

As a further example of how we are now considered unimportant, second-class citizens, has anyone noticed, at the bottom of the gov.uk site on driving licences that, whereas we must exchange our UK licences for French ones fairly simply (if a bit long-windedly), in the event of having to return to the UK we will not be allowed to exchange them back without taking another test?

This applies after Brexit, so if anyone is thinking of going back, you’d better get your skates on.

Carole Woods, Sarthe

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