|
Post by alancalverd on Jan 8, 2019 17:18:19 GMT 1
But the truth is all the EU needs to do is replace the indefinite trap of the Irish backstop with a paragraph that said something like: "when the UK and RoI have installed electronic means to conduct adequate customs checks across its border, the UK - including N.Ireland - may unilaterally leave the temporary customs arrangement." Said "electronic means" already exists and is in operation every day. There are different rates of VAT, fuel duty, tobacco tax etc across the border, and stuff is in transit all the time, with data and bank credits flowing in both directions. Both the UK and the RoI trade with non-EU countries under WTO or other agreements. I've imported major capital stuff direct from the USA and Eastern Bloc and exported to Africa - usually takes the accountants half a day to get all the paperwork in order the first time, and a "same again" button push thereafter. If I fly to any foreign country (including RoI) I get a UK tax rebate on the fuel I take out of the country - standard form, filed at the airport and paid to my account within a week. So with 2 years' notice, HMRC should be ready and waiting for the starting gun. If the RoI and the EU aren't ready, that's not our problem. Note the italic should. Contacts deep within HMRC tell me they have been given strict instructions not to prepare for WTO but to assume that nothing will change until told otherwise. It seems that not only is there no Plan B, but an absolute embargo on having one.
|
|
|
Post by aquacultured on Jan 10, 2019 1:34:30 GMT 1
Contacts deep within HMRC tell me they have been given strict instructions not to prepare for WTO but to assume that nothing will change until told otherwise. It seems that not only is there no Plan B, but an absolute embargo on having one. There is a Plan B. It will roll out in front of us all over the next 2-3 weeks. Communist moles are afoot, patriots all, having signed (redundantly, of course) the OSA. As I've said, Plan B will roll out in front of our very eyes, as if it had been planned months ago. 2-1 on Charles as the next monarch - and, with a different name, Evens. For his own good.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jan 11, 2019 6:20:25 GMT 1
But the truth is all the EU needs to do is replace the indefinite trap of the Irish backstop with a paragraph that said something like: "when the UK and RoI have installed electronic means to conduct adequate customs checks across its border, the UK - including N.Ireland - may unilaterally leave the temporary customs arrangement." Said "electronic means" already exists and is in operation every day. Yes, I know - the ERG quoted several companies who have the tech up and ready. The whole issue doesn't even come into play for at the very least twelve years, in any case. Yes, indeed. Even in the worst possible world, where such tech is not and never will be available, it's not by any stretch of the imagination a big issue. On average border checks between WTO trading partners are conducted between 1% and 2% of vehocles - trucks, trains, ships or planes. Under the rules, not even this amount is required. How hard would it be to check one or two percent of lorries crossing the Irish border? A couple of officers diverting 1% or so of trucks into a car park to have their papers checked, a quick gander at their loads, rotating through the crossing roads on a random basis? Big deal - this worst possible scenario would in no way break any part of the Good Friday Agreement. Her cardinal error from the start. It was always going to come down to WTO as the starting point - followed by extensive modifications under any trade deal, of course. The EU stated this implacably from the beginning.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jan 11, 2019 6:22:56 GMT 1
Contacts deep within HMRC tell me they have been given strict instructions not to prepare for WTO but to assume that nothing will change until told otherwise. It seems that not only is there no Plan B, but an absolute embargo on having one. There is a Plan B. It will roll out in front of us all over the next 2-3 weeks. Communist moles are afoot, patriots all, having signed (redundantly, of course) the OSA. As I've said, Plan B will roll out in front of our very eyes, as if it had been planned months ago. 2-1 on Charles as the next monarch - and, with a different name, Evens. For his own good. Plan B is to somehow so exhaust Brexit supporters, in the House, media, and country, that it will seem acceptable to hold another referendum - and so rig the question as to reverse the original decision. It was planned months ago - years ago. The planners make no secret of it.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jan 11, 2019 7:29:31 GMT 1
I started to create a new thread for this observation, but realised it's actually an important part of this subject.
Shelter has declared after a post-Grenfell study that Britain needs to build 3 million new homes to meet its people's needs over the next 20 years (something of an underestimate, I would argue.) By something that can only be called a coincidence if one believes uncontrolled immigration is a positive good in itself - as Messrs.Blair, Brown, Mandelson, Campbell etc. did, and no doubt still do, as long as they're profiting from it - this is just about the number of households that have been created in that time by immigrants - more than 80% of all new households created in this century, in fact (it's now running at 90% of all new households.) And yet "the Saj" declares that the housing shortage is nothing to do with immigration.
At the present rate, by the time Shelter's optimistic 20 years are up, we'll have had 6 million more immigrants to somehow house. On top of that, the children of those that have already arrived will have also entered the market, rental or owned. The oft-touted nostrum that immigrants contribute to the tax-take and so to economic growth (drummed home again in the recent Brexit drama) totally neglects this unfortunate fact. If the Brexit polls are any guide, most "young people" seem to too. All past experience, in every country in the world, should tell anyone in the least interested in social cohesion that this won't last for much longer.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jan 13, 2019 9:09:24 GMT 1
Why does everyone - in the House, and even more disgracefully, in the media - keep letting people like Gove get away with the preposterous claim that May's deal means we will have access to the European market without having to pay any fees for it? This is put forward as the reason the EU do not really want to implement the Backstop, and would only do so on a very temporary basis.
It's utter nonsense. Everything the EU has said, over and over and over - the last time was Tusk, in the most declamatory terms, just before May delayed the vote in December - states unequivocally that we will have to pay for that access, unless we accept the Customs Union and the "Four indissoluble Freedoms." They've said so from the very beginning, and they're still saying so.
Gove nor anyone else has the faintest idea what the EU will demand we pay for our future ability to trade with them. The negotiations on that issue have not even started, by the EU's deliberate design. All that is certain - by what they've said, many times, with no scintilla of prospect to resile - is that we will have to pay. Gove's declaration that our access will be - uniquely - free of charge, demonstrates he's either clueless about what the Deal actually says, and means, or he's deliberately trying to deceive everyone - including Parliament (a criminal offence.)
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jan 13, 2019 10:08:06 GMT 1
And, again, this complete rubbish about "dropping over the cliff" being "catastrophic"! I'm going to stop watching Sky news, I think, until all this nonsense is over - their bias and deliberate propagandising has now become quite intolerable, but while the Government is just as deceptive I suppose they can technically get away with it.
If we have to leave under WTO rules, a five minute delay for a customs check at Dover will produce a 20-mile tailback of lorries on Kent's roads, we're told, with a straight face (though why we would want to check outgoing vehicles is anyone's guess!). There will be terrible shortages of life-saving medicines like insulin, any food that's green or perishable, and planes won't be able to fly across the Channel.
This is the fact of the matter. Under WTO rules, if two traders are negotiating a trade deal, no tariffs and therefore customs checks need to be conducted at all, and this negotiating process can carry on for ten years before any check at all is required.
So - we are supposed to believe that "No Deal" means: "all negotiations towards a trade deal will cease forthwith."
Does it? Says who, and when did they say it?
Day One of our leaving on a No Deal basis, and the first thing that will happen is that the Govt and the EU will announce the opening of Trade Deal negotiations, on the new basis of WTO rules. No tariffs will be imposed; customs checks will not be necessary; no "Irish problem"; nothing will change, for business, for at least ten years.
The cost for such a perfectly reasonable, mutually beneficial (we're each other's biggest trading partner), and unexceptionable eventuality? Probably that both sides honour existing legal rights for the others' ex-pats, and, crucially, a reiteration that we "owe" and "will pay our legally obliged debt" of at least a fair chunk of the £39 billion, or whatever it turns out to be. No "catastrophe" at all then - or, if it is one, it's one that's already been agreed to by Therasa May and Ollie Robbins under what they claim is a "good deal".
The catastrophe, to the extent it is one, has already occurred, in the unnecessary (and totally illogical) fall in our currency induced by currency speculators, the cost of businesses holding back investment, the uncertainty of our future status leading to delays in foreign investment, or its locating to the Netherlands rather than here through fear of our mutual access being (again, totally illogically) blocked. This "catastrophe" has been entirely the culpable responsibility of May, Robbins, Hammond and the Treasury negotiating team - as well as a host of other Establishment figures totally betraying their country and duty, like Carney at the BofE, Fairbairn at the CBI, Martin at the IOD, Lagarde at the IMF, and all the other hysterical doom-mongerers like Heseltine, Clegg, Clarke, Cable, etc. etc. etc. If the people charged with being the caretakers and steersmen of our national economic health constantly scream Beware! Beware the ides of March! it's a sure-fire predictable result that the international damage to our economy will be severe, even given their now proven total unreliability.
|
|
|
Post by alancalverd on Jan 14, 2019 0:06:15 GMT 1
The French have a sound tradition of common sense with regard to customs checks. Some years ago two of my colleagues were returning from an experimental session at the Bureau International de Poids et Mesures, with a small van full of equipment that required customs clearance. They noticed that the commercial vehicle line was moving much faster than the private car line through passport and customs, so they joined it. They then discovered why. As each British truck approached the gate, the co-driver (being, of course, on the "wrong" side) reached out with two passports, a cargo manifest, and 20 Francs. The manifests were stamped immediately and the 20F disappeared. Pas de probleme, monsieur, bon voyage.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jan 14, 2019 11:47:02 GMT 1
My first business, back in the mid-80s, was making traditionally crafted games - Go, Shogi, Pachisi, 3D jigsaws, etc. The best line turned out to be Go, and this required, both at the top-quality high-value and higher-volume low end, a considerable amount of importing and exporting - exotic kaya and katsura wood from Japan, agathis and mulberry from New Zealand and Borneo, stones from Japan and, mainly, Germany. My main markets were in Germany and in the States, and France for jigsaw puzzles, Bagatelle, and L'Attaque. Exporting to the US was no trouble at all - in fact, if I'd wanted, the Government at the time (Thatcher) made it as easy as possible, including the availability of virtually free credit facilities. Importing, except from Germany, wasn't much harder on the whole, once good import agents had been found (again, the government made this a doddle.) Customs declarations and checks and tariff payments are all for the most part handled for you - a little bit of paperwork and, in those days, faxing. The only real headache was with importing from and exporting back to Germany, and to a lesser extent France. This was before the Single Market, but my understanding is that not much has changed (twenty years later, with another business, I tried dipping my toes exporting into the EU again - Italy, this time - and found it to be if anything even worse) - the difficulties were all to do with notifications and hoop-jumping through reams of market regulations: what were my varnishes and inks, did I have this or that certificate, had I had this or that inspection, what were my contracts with any employees, were my tariffs paid, what bonded warehouses did I use, where were my customs clearances, what standing were my VAT accounts in, etc etc etc. One thing after another, always with interminable waits while this or that department finally got their arses into gear - all designed, I think originally, to ensure I wasn't somehow undermining the indigenous Go manufacturers, but which had long ago acquired an unstoppable bureaucratic avalanche of momentum of its own. After a short while, when it became clear this paperwork nightmare wasn't early-teething but a continuous hamster-wheel, I gave up selling in Germany altogether: it simply wasn't worth the hassle.
I'm talking about a tiny little business, to be sure, but times many many thousands that's what the really substantial bulk of any nation's economy amounts to. I wonder at what the true costs to the British economy has really been in the forty or so years we've been misled into focusing so much on Europe as our principal market, when the real opportunities, requiring a little more initial effort but with a greater long-term return, were going unexplored elsewhere.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jan 14, 2019 15:00:20 GMT 1
There is in any case an obvious solution to this hysterically over-exaggerated problem, even supposing it ever becomes a reality. These lorries are sitting motionless on the ferry for at least 45 minutes. Only one in a hundred are ever checked, by any border controls in the world - a separate lane on the deck for those randomly selected on any crossing, and a couple of customs agents have all the time in the world to do their wearisomely pointless job, no delays in trade entailed at all. The same with papers - which should surely be done electronically, these days, with the possible exceptions of one-offs like your friends (which already exists in any case - as anyone who regularly does an alcohol & fags run across the Channel, as I do, will tell you.)
As for drugs and food and just-in-time car parts - for heaven's sake! Does Project Fear really think we're all complete gullible morons? These traders can certainly do their paperwork electronically, and a fast-track lane (they already exist) where no checks or delays are incurred means all these thousands of fridges are going to be sitting there in some govt warehouse until they rust into obsolescence. The incompetence of this government - the blame must almost entirely lie with the Civil Service, with deliberation or not - quite ghasts my flabber.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jan 14, 2019 17:39:47 GMT 1
Now May points out that we would have no "implementation period" under a No Deal. Whose fault is that, you totally irresponsible woman?
|
|
|
Post by alancalverd on Jan 14, 2019 18:49:37 GMT 1
I've tried exporting high-value goods to France. Damn near impossible. The stuff was made in the UK to CE specifications, so according to EU rules there was no problem en principe, but the process of "homologation" meant supplying the Frogs with interminable paperwork and test samples with no guarantee of actually selling anything until it was obsolete. One of the components was a high voltage generator manufactured in Spain, but we always bought it from a distributor in the USA because he was selling in a truly competitive market, and therefore offered it to us, after two Atlantic crossings, at 30% less than the best EU trade price!
|
|
|
Post by alancalverd on Jan 14, 2019 18:56:16 GMT 1
I wonder at what the true costs to the British economy has really been in the forty or so years we've been misled into focusing so much on Europe as our principal market, when the real opportunities, requiring a little more initial effort but with a greater long-term return, were going unexplored elsewhere. And there you have it. Bare facts, provided by Parliament itself, but politically inconvenient, it seems.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jan 15, 2019 0:29:09 GMT 1
I wonder at what the true costs to the British economy has really been in the forty or so years we've been misled into focusing so much on Europe as our principal market, when the real opportunities, requiring a little more initial effort but with a greater long-term return, were going unexplored elsewhere. And there you have it. Bare facts, provided by Parliament itself, but politically inconvenient, it seems. Yes, quite so. People - politicians, economists - have forgotten what this means: your standard of living is being daily eroded. In the 60s, before Nixon scrapped Breton Woods and thus, effectively, the Gold Standard, and started this insane Fiat currency experiment, such a stark "bare fact" sent Governments into crises and had the PM pleading on national television for everyone not to panic. I see in today's Telegraph ominous signs that the cabal of central banks are, reading between the lines, going to try to collectively start reeling back the trillions of QE they've pumped into the world. I shudder to think where that's going to lead, I really do. So far, with a few alarming hiccups, the latest of which is still in expectoration, the world has managed to survive its adrenalin shot after the 2008 heart attack - I see no evidence that its economy is able to function healthily without the ensuing drug addiction its entailed. We're in for a very bumpy ride: hold onto your hats.
|
|
|
Post by mrsonde on Jan 15, 2019 0:41:08 GMT 1
I've tried exporting high-value goods to France. Damn near impossible. Yeah. Try getting a job there, as "a European citizen" - a job that's not purely casual and temporary. Very, very difficult, even if you've got a residency permit. And "benefits"?! Ha! Do you have a residency permit? Non? Fuck off then. Try selling anything that isn't French there! I only managed it because I had friends who had shops in Paris and Clermont Ferrand and Toulouse and Brioude who were willing to do all the paperwork themselves. Otherwise - forget it. Hmmmm...as it happens, I'm looking for a high voltage generator at the moment myself. Are we talking starting motor sort of high voltage, or something a little more potent? I'm shopping for something in the 200,000V region. I know I can easily rig that up myself quite cheaply - but I want something with delicately precise variability. My usual scientific equipmeny guys can't help - they keep directing me to the elec supply people, but they have nothing that offers the control without costing a mortgage. Someone in the MRI business? Could it be that you might turn out to be worth knowing after all? Don't ask anyone who's a communist, my contacts keep telling me. Why, are they dangerous, or something? I ask.
|
|