Brexit - whats the difference.....

[ChopleyIOM]

In and of itself it's certainly got future potential, although do take a look at the timelines to understand how long we'll be talking about for it come online in any sort of meaningful way

The thing is though, that for many British businesses it's already too late, and in many other cases they'd much rather just have their trading relationship with the EU back, than have to start all over again with countries such as Peru and Mexico.....

(Also note that some of the countries are already covered by existing trade deals, such as Japan, where the UK simply achieved (give or take) a rollover of what the EU had already negotiated.)

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Brexit has brought no benefits, UK manufacturers say.

This is why stuff like the CPTPP is more ephemeral and theoretical than anything else, the promise of cake later isn't much good if the reality is bankruptcy or a massive reduction in trade today.

There are no benefits as a result of Brexit, an organisation representing UK manufacturers has said.

According to Make UK, it is currently hard for manufacturers to see any advantages from leaving the EU, and the organisation warns exports to the bloc could become a permanent problem if the government does not step in.

The organisations admitted its position following a meeting it had with SNP MP Angus MacNeil.

Tweeting yesterday, MacNeil said that “essentially, after their [Make UK] talking to 1000s of member businesses, no one has reported any advantages to Brexit.”

He later added large businesses are “still exporting, with hassles, to the EU, but a lot of small businesses have stopped”.

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[bamberfishcake]

And I quote: '

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The British people repeatedly voted to end free movement and take back control of our immigration system.

“Employers should invest in our domestic workforce instead of relying on labour from abroad.”

 

[paul7388]

Lol maybe it is all true.

But I would never quote any article or information from that clown Macneil from the SNP.

This is a man that is a proven liar from a party that will do anything to try and secure independence. No matter how good Brexit was he would still bend the truth in any way to.secure his and his.parties long term goal.

 

[Kroffe]

Did someone say 'One pound fish'?

 

[bamberfishcake]

Lol maybe it is all true.

But I would never quote any article or information from that clown Macneil from the SNP.

This is a man that is a proven liar from a party that will do anything to try and secure independence. No matter how good Brexit was he would still bend the truth in any way to.secure his and his.parties long term goal.

Just your average politician then.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

A hot take from the Brexity and anti-EU Daily Mail this morning, hitting the problem that a lot of Brexity types are now, namely that it's completely impossible to continue to blame the 'pingedemic' (which has largely abated) and the pandemic in general (because, y'know, that's happening everywhere), and yet the UK is the only country in all of Europe experiencing serious supply chain issues.

So their new big idea is to, erm, unite with the EU to get rid of all that pesky bureaucracy (that Brexit was going to get rid of, remember), whilst conveniently brushing aside the fact that these are effectively trade sanctions that we imposed on ourselves by, erm, leaving the EU and also making the choice to leave the Single Market and the Customs Union.

If the EU had kicked us out then this might make some sort of vague sense, but this is literally all stuff we did to ourselves, voluntarily, and now the MoS's big idea, effectively, is to say to the EU, 'Help us out here please'.

Starting to get a bit awkward, isn't it?

 

[mack341]

The EU stands for bureaucracy, that's what gets it up of a morning, there's one way of doing things [what we have decided] and we must make sure eu people/businesses conform. Part protection racket, part gravy train for those that administer/run it.

 

[Daavid63]

CNN article, a liberal UK hating news network in the States. Fully supports the EU and any other organisation that can bash the Brits, a sister to the Guardian rag in its outlook on Brexit.

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Keep drying your eyes remainers. ???

 

[ChopleyIOM]

CNN article, a liberal UK hating news network in the States. Fully supports the EU and any other organisation that can bash the Brits, a sister to the Guardian rag in its outlook on Brexit.

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Keep drying your eyes remainers. ???

Yes I'm sure that will be of great comfort to the businesses up and down the UK that have gone bankrupt, are about to go bankrupt, or have seen their trade massively diminish as a result of the trade sanctions the UK imposed on itself with Brexit.

As an aside, when did 'liberal' become a pejorative term? I was accused of being 'too liberal' in one of the comments left on my Mental video and I'm wondering what that's actually supposed to mean.

Does liberal mean what you think it means, or are you assigning qualities to it that don't belong?

 

[ChopleyIOM]

The EU stands for bureaucracy, that's what gets it up of a morning, there's one way of doing things [what we have decided] and we must make sure eu people/businesses conform. Part protection racket, part gravy train for those that administer/run it.

I'm sorry mack I don't even know what that post means, this is bureaucracy that didn't exist before, that now only exists because the UK left the EU, and along with that, the Single Market and the Customs Union.

The EU are conforming perfectly with the new rules that we decided to impose on ourselves.

 

[Daavid63]

Yes I'm sure that will be of great comfort to the businesses up and down the UK that have gone bankrupt, are about to go bankrupt, or have seen their trade massively diminish as a result of the trade sanctions the UK imposed on itself with Brexit.

As an aside, when did 'liberal' become a pejorative term? I was accused of being 'too liberal' in one of the comments left on my Mental video and I'm wondering what that's actually supposed to mean.

Does liberal mean what you think it means, or are you assigning qualities to it that don't belong?

View attachment 158195

Liberal in the UK denotes hate of any policy or dissent that does not agree with their policies. An easy example is the extreme left Marxist Corbynistas who will tolerate nobody, no policy, unless they agree with them. ?

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Liberal in the UK denotes hate of any policy or dissent that does not agree with their policies. An easy example is the extreme left Marxist Corbynistas who will tolerate nobody, no policy, unless they agree with them. ?

OK I've just checked and that's not how language works.

 

[interlog]

Iceland's managing director explicitly calls out Brexit-related supply chain issues (NOT the pingdemic and NOT Covid) as threatening unprecedented disruption to Christmas across the UK.

Says UK Gov has dropped the ball badly in not recognising HGV drivers as a skilled profession so they can continue to use EU drivers until UK drivers can be trained and brought online (assuming they want to do the job at all).

Calls Brexit a 'self-inflicted wound'.

Who knows @dunover - maybe there will be the dreaded pigs-in-blankets shortage after all!

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View attachment 158054

We (a rival supermarket) did a recruitment campaign recently for LGV drivers. Of the 90 applicants, 15 of these were from the nearby Iceland DC. When asked for the reason why they wanted to leave Iceland, it was that we paid higher wages and better benefits. We took 7 of these drivers on.

Perhaps Iceland should look at their 3rd party suppliers and ask them to pay a decent wage so that their staff don't leave elsewhere.

 

[mack341]

I'm sorry mack I don't even know what that post means, this is bureaucracy that didn't exist before, that now only exists because the UK left the EU, and along with that, the Single Market and the Customs Union.

The EU are conforming perfectly with the new rules that we decided to impose on ourselves.

We have a fair amount of ott bureaucrats and also hardcore remainers in the civil service drafting the rules, combine that with the big daddy of bureaucracy the EU and we arrive here. I also think the EU elite must view brexit britain as an existential threat, if we do alright outside the club it won't help their cause.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

We (a rival supermarket) did a recruitment campaign recently for LGV drivers. Of the 90 applicants, 15 of these were from the nearby Iceland DC. When asked for the reason why they wanted to leave Iceland, it was that we paid higher wages and better benefits. We took 7 of these drivers on.

Perhaps Iceland should look at their 3rd party suppliers and ask them to pay a decent wage so that their staff don't leave elsewhere.

Yes I know, we've done this already, the shortage of drivers is a multi-faceted and nuanced problem, and one of those is crap pay and conditions, and another one is Brexit.

It's hard to have this debate because it always goes:

'The shortage of drivers isn't all down to Brexit you know'
'I agree, I've never said it was, it's nuanced'
'SO IT'S NOT BREXIT THEN HA HA HA'

This is what happens when you bring facts to a knife fight.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

We have a fair amount of ott bureaucrats and also hardcore remainers in the civil service drafting the rules, combine that with the big daddy of bureaucracy the EU and we arrive here. I also think the EU elite must view brexit britain as an existential threat, if we do alright outside the club it won't help their cause.

OK I'm really trying hard to follow your train of reasoning here mack, but I've got to be honest I'm having trouble with it.

So how come none of this stuff was a problem when we were in the EU (which by definition should have made it so much worse with all the red tape and bureaucracy ), and now we're out of the EU, bonfire of red tape and getting rid of all the bureaucracy etc, why has it got massively, objectively, obviously worse?

Is it possible, and I know this might sound a bit wild, that Brexit is actually the problem here?

 

[interlog]

Yes I know, we've done this already, the shortage of drivers is a multi-faceted and nuanced problem, and one of those is crap pay and conditions, and another one is Brexit.

It's hard to have this debate because it always goes:

'The shortage of drivers isn't all down to Brexit you know'
'I agree, I've never said it was, it's nuanced'
'SO IT'S NOT BREXIT THEN HA HA HA'

This is what happens when you bring facts to a knife fight.

So why link to such articles?

 

[ChopleyIOM]

So why link to such articles?

Because it's all part of the wider debate, I guess Iceland are more affected by the Brexit side of things because they relied more on EU drivers who have gone home as a result of one, some, or all of the pandemic, IR35 and Brexit. (Iceland being a low cost budget type of outfit who will be looking to do everything as cheaply as possible.)

I've acknowledged multiple times in this thread that medium to long term, having our own UK drivers would be far better for 'UK Plc' as a whole, it's not great to have entire industries heavily reliant on cheap foreign labour, but we are where we are for now, and the Iceland managing director's suggestion that working visas be issued in the interim to ameliorate some of the negative consequences of Brexit is worth considering.

 

[interlog]

Because it's all part of the wider debate, I guess Iceland are more affected by the Brexit side of things because they relied more on EU drivers who have gone home as a result of one, some, or all of the pandemic, IR35 and Brexit. (Iceland being a low cost budget type of outfit who will be looking to do everything as cheaply as possible.)

I've acknowledged multiple times in this thread that medium to long term, having our own UK drivers would be far better for 'UK Plc' as a whole, it's not great to have entire industries heavily reliant on cheap foreign labour, but we are where we are for now, and the Iceland managing director's suggestion that working visas be issued in the interim to ameliorate some of the negative consequences of Brexit is worth considering.

Margins within our industry are wafer thin. Every supermarket cuts costs and part of these cost cutting practices has resulted in stuff not getting on the shelf. Just go through historic newspaper articles and look at the number of redundancies made by all of the supermarkets.

And when supermarkets try to amalgamate their operations in order to compete with the "German competition", it gets knocked on the head by the CMA.

It simply is a race to the bottom and as a result of that, things will suffer.

 

[interlog]

Margins within our industry are wafer thin. Every supermarket cuts costs and part of these cost cutting practices has resulted in stuff not getting on the shelf. Just go through historic newspaper articles and look at the number of redundancies made by all of the supermarkets.

And when supermarkets try to amalgamate their operations in order to compete with the "German competition", it gets knocked on the head by the CMA.

It simply is a race to the bottom and as a result of that, things will suffer.

This was predicted back in 2003:

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[ChopleyIOM]

Margins within our industry are wafer thin. Every supermarket cuts costs and part of these cost cutting practices has resulted in stuff not getting on the shelf. Just go through historic newspaper articles and look at the number of redundancies made by all of the supermarkets.

And when supermarkets try to amalgamate their operations in order to compete with the "German competition", it gets knocked on the head by the CMA.

It simply is a race to the bottom and as a result of that, things will suffer.

Again interlog, I don't disagree with you, the goal of capitalism is to make as much money as possible from as little outlay as possible, and workers get the shaft as part of that process, particularly where they're not unionised. or or aren't allowed to be unionised. (And then we end up with Amazon drivers pissing in plastic bottles in the back of their vans because they can't afford to take toilet breaks.)

My grandfather on my dad's side was a long distance LGV driver, and he earned enough in that job to support an entire household of his wife and three children (my dad and two uncles), they weren't rich and my grandma took work on the side where possible, but fundamentally it was a difficult, tough, demanding, but also reasonably well paid job.

I'm wondering if there's more we agree on when it comes to some aspects of this than we disagree on, the thing that irritates me is the insistence (not by yourself) from some quarters that everything has to be binary, black or white, one thing or the other - NOTHING TO DO WITH BREXIT - or the flipside of that which is - WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BLAME EVERYTHING ON BREXIT? - and I'm like, that's not what I'm doing as a blanket statement, when it comes to the driver shortage I keep doing the exact opposite and constantly stress that Brexit is one of many factors swirling as part of a very complex situation.

Now admittedly, when it comes to some other things, it is almost entirely the fault of Brexit, such as some SMEs who import/export to the EU finding themselves well and truly shafted now we're out of the Customs Union and Single Market - but that's not an argument I'm making, at all, when it comes to driver shortages.

 

[interlog]

Again interlog, I don't disagree with you, the goal of capitalism is to make as much money as possible from as little outlay as possible, and workers get the shaft as part of that process, particularly where they're not unionised. or or aren't allowed to be unionised. (And then we end up with Amazon drivers pissing in plastic bottles in the back of their vans because they can't afford to take toilet breaks.)

My grandfather on my dad's side was a long distance LGV driver, and he earned enough in that job to support an entire household of his wife and three children (my dad and two uncles), they weren't rich and my grandma took work on the side where possible, but fundamentally it was a difficult, tough, demanding, but also reasonably well paid job.

I'm wondering if there's more we agree on when it comes to some aspects of this than we disagree on, the thing that irritates me is the insistence (not by yourself) from some quarters that everything has to be binary, black or white, one thing or the other - NOTHING TO DO WITH BREXIT - or the flipside of that which is - WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BLAME EVERYTHING ON BREXIT? - and I'm like, that's not what I'm doing as a blanket statement, when it comes to the driver shortage I keep doing the exact opposite and constantly stress that Brexit is one of many factors swirling as part of a very complex situation.

Now admittedly, when it comes to some other things, it is almost entirely the fault of Brexit, such as some SMEs who import/export to the EU finding themselves well and truly shafted now we're out of the Customs Union and Single Market - but that's not an argument I'm making, at all, when it comes to driver shortages.

In terms of the long distance operation, I have been in this industry long enough to know that the demise of this kicked off, ironically, when the Southern European transport companies came on the scene with their brand new EU subsidized vehicles. They could do the job so much cheaper which in turn resulted in the race to the bottom. Add to that the expansion of the EU to the east with cheaper labour and the UK haulage industry was doomed.

So yes, a European issue, but not quite Brexit!

 

[Daavid63]

Yes I know, we've done this already, the shortage of drivers is a multi-faceted and nuanced problem, and one of those is crap pay and conditions, and another one is Brexit.

It's hard to have this debate because it always goes:

'The shortage of drivers isn't all down to Brexit you know'
'I agree, I've never said it was, it's nuanced'
'SO IT'S NOT BREXIT THEN HA HA HA'

This is what happens when you bring facts to a knife fight.

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?

 

[mack341]

OK I'm really trying hard to follow your train of reasoning here mack, but I've got to be honest I'm having trouble with it.

So how come none of this stuff was a problem when we were in the EU (which by definition should have made it so much worse with all the red tape and bureaucracy ), and now we're out of the EU, bonfire of red tape and getting rid of all the bureaucracy etc, why has it got massively, objectively, obviously worse?

Is it possible, and I know this might sound a bit wild, that Brexit is actually the problem here?

It's such a wonderful club to be in you can never leave without it beng a catastrophe, the EU would never act to make life more difficult for any that do leave, they're too nice and decent for anything like that, silly me for even thinking it might be possible....