Pablo- Registered: 21 Mar 2018
- Posts: 614
I consider myself to be a thinking Brexiter. That’s why I (after much heart-searching) agreed to go to Switzerland with a BBC documentary film crew to actually find out what life outside the customs union would be.
I was totally amazed to find out:
1. The basic procedures for import/export of goods have not changed since 1972 when I worked in import and export bills departments in a UK bank. Believe it or not it’s still totally paper-based and everything has to be physically archived for at least 6 years. Cloud or hard disc storage alone is not allowed.
2. There is a massive gap between the number of qualified customs brokers in the UK and the number required after exiting the Customs Union. It takes years to train one up. In the office we visited in Basel every member of staff bar the receptionist is a graduate. Many of them are law graduates. Why? Because of the attention to detail required and the consequences of getting something wrong. And between their 25 staff they can speak every European language plus a few others besides.
3. There is a massive difference between the Single Market and the Customs Union in terms of moving physical goods across borders.
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Pablo- Registered: 21 Mar 2018
- Posts: 614
Oh, and the Government has made many companies in import/export sign a non-disclosure agreement in case the real facts frighten the horses.
This is not Project Fear, this is Project Fact. We should be out of the EU but a no-deal Brexit will be a Dog’s Brexit. There is a better way but we won’t find it until everyone with a political axe to grind puts their cudgels down.
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Weird Granny Slater
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 7 Jun 2017
- Posts: 3,008
P, forgive my ignorance, but do you have a broadcast date for the documentary, or have I missed it?
'Pass the cow dung, my dropsy's killing me' - Heraclitus
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Pablo- Registered: 21 Mar 2018
- Posts: 614
#2561 either 29/10 or 5/11. Part of the Inside Out programme on BBC1 at 7.30.
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howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Direct challenge to the authority of the PM but I don't see her changing course now.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45853384howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
This is now going to be about the arithmetic as the Chequers deal with maybe a few minor amendments will be agreed. The DUP will withdraw their support for the Government so it all comes down to how many Labour MPs will back the deal. Needs to be rushed through as there are plots afoot to overthrow the PM and install David Davies as interim leader.
ray hutstone- Registered: 1 Apr 2018
- Posts: 2,158
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
The fanatics will rant and rave but this close to our leaving date this is the only workable arrangement. It seems to be complicated but the main thing is that we stay in the customs union. Never thought I would say this but the PM is suddenly looking like the boss and the sulky people around her who want her job are now in her slip stream.
Reginald Barrington
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 17 Dec 2014
- Posts: 3,235
The slipstream is what they will use to slingshot themselves to the front, she needs to keep her enemies in front of her to see what they're up to!
Arte et Marte
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
True Reg but the 48 letters that would force a leadership election haven't gone in yet and even if they do it would take a few months to complete. Big meeting in Brussels tonight.
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
is that another piss up H, if it is I will volentere to go. on expences that is.
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
ray hutstone- Registered: 1 Apr 2018
- Posts: 2,158
It's really old news, Brian. The referendum act would never have made it through the Commons had it not been based on the fact that the result was advisory. So democracy stopped in June 2016, did it?
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howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Bit of a let down yesterday evening and it looks like the forthcoming summit won't bring an agreement, doesn't help that the DUP seem perfectly happy if we leave with no deal.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45859282Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
all together a cock up from start to finish.a no deal will finish this country as a whole.
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howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Courtesy of the Times.
It was always going to be the case that the negotiations at Westminster would be tougher for the prime minister than the haggling in Brussels. Although the European Union is striking a hard bargain — as it was bound to do — it is broadly united, consistent and acting rationally to protect its interests. The same cannot be said of the United Kingdom, where ideology is being put before pragmatism and party concerns placed above the national interest. The Brexit talks are on a knife-edge before what was to have been a “moment of truth” summit this week because, for entirely domestic reasons, Theresa May has no room to compromise. One cabinet minister describes the “tiny airstrip just a few metres wide” on to which it would be possible to land a deal with the EU, but the prime minister’s co-pilots will not let her adjust course by even a few degrees in order to get the plane to the safe spot.
At least three Brexiteer cabinet ministers are threatening to resign in protest at plans to effectively keep the country in a customs union, while the Democratic Unionist Party is warning that it will withdraw its support from the government if the prime minister agrees to a situation that could mean Northern Ireland staying in a version of the EU single market. Its leader Arlene Foster has now said that she believes a no-deal Brexit to be the most likely outcome of the talks. Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, has also made clear that she would strongly oppose any solution that gave special status to Northern Ireland, since that could strengthen the case for another referendum on Scottish independence and hasten the break-up of the UK. If Mrs May tries to pivot towards the Tory Eurosceptics to protect her position in No 10 she will lose the support of her cabinet pro-Europeans. Meanwhile, Labour is like the air traffic controller sending out mixed messages that risk sending the aircraft crashing to the ground.
Mrs May might get through today’s cabinet meeting by keeping the plane circling in the air for a bit longer before specifying her landing spot, but she cannot stay in the holding pattern for ever. In her Commons statement she was deliberately vague about the terms of the so-called backstop but she will have to offer clarity soon. “Her strategy has failed,” says one senior Tory MP. “We are between a rock and a hard place and she will crash into one side or the other. We are approaching the final act of the Tory party. Europe is the disease which has destroyed the last four Tory prime ministers and it’s about to destroy this one too.”
A minister compares the Conservative leader to a chess player with only a king left on the board, who is powerless but still hanging on. “She’s in a situation where every move she makes worsens the national predicament. We still basically have no agreed government position — it’s absurd. If you were playing computer chess the only way out of this would be to press the reset button.”
Another minister says that with the hard-Brexit European Research Group flexing its muscles “the Conservative Party has taken leave of its senses and the party of pragmatism is being driven by the ideologues. The country is being held hostage by petty politicians pushing their own fortunes.”
President Macron of France said recently that the rest of the EU faced a version of the “prisoner’s dilemma”, the game theory concept in which two parties acting in their own selfish interests refuse to co-operate and so ultimately lose out. “Everyone can have an interest in negotiating on their own and think they can negotiate better than their neighbour,” he said, but by doing that “it is probable that collectively we will create a situation which is unfavourable to the European Union and thus to each of us”. So far at least the other 27 countries have acted together for the greater good, but in the divided UK the political tribes are operating in their narrow self-interest in a way that could end up producing the outcome they least want.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
The PM will be on her way to Brussels later for no apparent reason, neither side is going to budge on the NI border issue, they will have to extend article 50 and hope that a solution can be found.
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
Brexit dead in the water, if the irish border is the problem.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
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