Australian sheep cause climate change

 A particularly useful and detailed analysis of a recent story in this week's edition of Briefings for Britain:

An environmental story with little substance was picked up by Sky News, repeated by The Guardian, City AM, the BBC, The Times, the Labour Party website and given substantial airtime on Newsnight, why? Because it gave Pro EU supporters an environmental reason to scupper the UK Australia trade deal.

 

For the EU and its supporters, climate change is the new Trade Barrier du jour...[that is, they erect barriers ostensibly on climate grounds, while hypocritically dealing with major polluters and polluting themselves]...If either the UK or the EU were actually interested in reducing carbon emissions in trade deals, they would buy the meat from Brazil, the US or Canada, not the animal feed.

Of particular interest for this blog , was the way Newsnight managed the debate. First former Labour leader Miliband appeared in the studio passionately claiming: 

‘You have got to put pressure on the big emitters, so you don’t do dodgy deals with Australia.’ ... ‘you don’t do a trade deal with Australia and say you can drop your temperature commitments from your trade deal.

The B for B article notes that 'in 2018 the world’s big emitters were all in the Northern Hemisphere... the EU...[was]... the world’s 3^rd biggest CO2 emitter' [The USA and China are the top 2].

Of course there has to be 'balance' so  the BBC also included an online contribution from a Conservative MP, but 

'the Newsnight anchor, Emily Maitlis, lined up Dunne’s contribution with the highly emotive: "We’ve bowed to Australia on what they wanted on climate change, … we have changed what we said over the Paris Climate temperature goals because we didn’t want to scare off Australians over a trade deal"....

City AM joined in with the headline: Scott Morrison confirms climate targets dropped from UK-Australia trade deal, but the first line of the article actually said ‘Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has today confirmed the UK-Australia trade deal will not include binding commitments to climate change targets from the Paris Agreement because it “wasn’t a climate agreement, it was a trade agreement”....Why is the media claiming that a specific temperature [target] has been ‘dropped’ from the FTA? 

I conclude this manufactured activist outrage against Australia is for protectionist reasons rather than for environmental ones. This is simply another attempt by the #FBPE supporters to scupper the UK Australia trade agreement as it is the UK’s first completely new trade agreement outside the EU.

 Showing how moral panics build:

Once published the story was picked up by other ‘news’ organisations and repeated without any of them reading the published FTA Agreement in Principle – easily found on the internet. Equally at fault were the ambitious politicians and activists trying to score points against the Government (and given large amounts of airtime by the BBC) but not bothering to research the world’s largest CO2 emitters nor how that list overlaps with the UK’s present trading partners. At least the EU re-joiners, have their motivation spelt out on their hashtags, unlike the others who jumped on this bandwagon. But most worrying was the small amount of press given to Liz Truss’ denial [she had said ‘the stuff you are repeating is simply fake news’]. The first page of a google search only produced one article, all the rest were articles pushing the fake story.

NB #FBPE is an old support group Follow Back Pro EU. It appears to have been divisive. Surely it can't still be active? I wonder myself if this is not just an attempt to shift pnb energy into the old rival cause to Remain, especially as it is contemporary? It's just cultural politics  again.

Dogwhistles in Remainer ideology

After a while a lot can be left implicit in ideological stories. This is often described as a 'dogwhistle', a thinly coded way referring to racist or sexist tropes via terms like 'urban crime' or 'hysterical demonstrators'. The daddy of them all was the analysis of the 'mugging' moral panic of the 1970s and 1980s, of course.

Grauniad-reading liberals need a bit more help to get there and a bit of practice condemning the efforts of others. Thus we have been told once or twice that 'supply problems' is an apologetic for 'problems produced only/solely by Brexit'. The Graun is trying to work the trick in reverse. A story I failed to relocate in this week's Observer had dire tales of shortages that didn't actually refer to Brexit at all -- but it was located under a byline that said 'Brexit' anyway. This one today is a bit more transitional for slightly dimmer dogs who still need a bit of work:

Sewage discharge rules eased over fears of chemical shortage

Wastewater plants in England and Wales offered waiver because of impact of lorry driver crisis

It's a good topic -- sewage and ecological damage, although a bit of a problem with nasty chemicals, but no matter -- on with the story of driver shortages. It seems based on the usual handout after a survey, of course, from an industry PR person:

A recent survey of its members showed that 93% were experiencing haulage shortages, up from 61% in the first quarter of the year....One of its concerns is that the driver shortage will be worse in the chemical industry because of the requirement for additional qualifications for anyone carrying hazardous substances....“We are seeing a real crunch on the driver front,” said Tim Doggett, CEO of the CBA [Chemical Business Association]....“My concern and what I have said to the Department for Transport this morning is the game of musical chairs we will see. If you have a driver faced with a job which means he doesn’t have to get out of his cab to deal with dangerous substances and one that gets paid the same and has to handle hazards and be specially qualified to do so, you know which job the driver will go for,” he added.

So they have evidently relied on paying general rates for special and hazardous jobs and now they face a shortage. I thought capitalists knew how to solve these problems based on market dynamics. But no, 'the chronic shortage of lorry drivers [is] caused by Brexit and the pandemic' and thus cannot be solved except by Government. Or rejoining the EU? Saying sorry?

The magic term Brexit is what got it in the Graun, no doubt. There is no attempt to estimate or explain the relative effects of Brexit and pandemic or set them against the dubious employment practices the industry itself confesses to. 

It is not even clear that it is a real problem with real effects yet:

In a regulatory position statement issued on Tuesday, the Environment Agency introduced a waiver that would mean some companies would not have to go through the third stage in the treatment of sewage if they did not have the right chemicals....A government spokesperson said the water supply to consumers would not be affected and any waste company that wished to avail of the waiver needed prior approval from Defra....It also said that no water company had yet notified it of a shortage of ferric sulphate but it was introducing the regulatory position as a precautionary measure.

Observer keeps the faith

 Well, W Keegan does. He is still right about everything:

Just how long will it take the electors of this benighted country to realise that they have been conned by the Brexiters?...The evidence mounts that Brexit is an almost unmitigated disaster. The slogan “get Brexit done” has been supplanted by “supply chain issues”. As a direct, and wholly predictable, consequence of Brexit, Britain is economically, culturally, reputationally, politically and diplomatically poorer....

The truth is that this country continues to want European standards of public service and healthcare, but nothing like the levels of taxation that our fellow Europeans are prepared to pay.As for Chancellor Sunak, by espousing Brexit he has helped to make the country poorer, thereby eroding the exchequer’s tax base. I think this is going to catch up with the Brexiters.

It is still one simple explanation -- not covid but European membership is the key. Quite where this will lead is less sure --rejoining? Keegan's personal vindication so he can die happy?

Exports hit by Brexit and weasels

This graun story seems rock solid surely?

Brexit: food and drink exports to EU suffer ‘disastrous’ decline

Although there is already a reservation :

First-half sales fall £2bn, says industry body, as barriers are compounded by staff shortages

Nevertheless, the main claim is that the decline is 'because of Brexit trade barriers, with sales of beef and cheese hit hardest', although, again, there is a weasel: 'compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain'.and 'labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain'

The data seem clear enough, although they cover 2019--2021, not just the 'first half of the year' as initially claimed. To summarise:

By product category, the biggest falls in sales to the EU have been in dairy and meat: beef exports were down 37%, cheese down 34% and milk and cream down 19% in the first half of 2021 compared with the equivalent six months in 2019.

Exports to nearly all EU member states fell significantly, including a loss of more than £500m in sales to Ireland, while sales to Germany, Spain and Italy were each down around a half since the first half of 2019.

But year-on-year exports of salmon and whisky, two of Scotland’s flagship products, were up 27% and 20%. [which might need some explaining --no extra paperwork for  these?]

Exporters have struggled with the extra paperwork and administrative costs that came into force on 1 January 2021...[and a return to an old issue -- still unresolved?]...the physical sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) checks that were not necessary before Brexit, with lorries facing partial or full unloads in Calais and other ports if any of the paperwork is missing.

imports were already being hit, with products of animal origin heavily impacted. Pork imports fell 19.6%, cheese imports were down 17.6%, and chicken imports fell by 17%.

 

 

 Brexit hits exports:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline