Return of an old friend...

 The Observer's cartoonist finds inspiration er..just in time...

Serious new delays from Brexit -- CD cover magazines(?) and Percy pigs

 Oh no! Graunyworld is rocked to its foundations as the terrible news breaks:

Brexit delays Mojo magazine as cover CDs remain stranded in EU

The venerable cover CD, beloved of music magazine buyers for a generation, has been challenged by Brexit after Mojo was forced to postpone distribution of its next issue because of a delay in delivery....Mojo’s problem represents another challenge to the economics of the cover-mounted CD. Once a prized staple of music and technology magazines and even deemed a threat to the music industry when they appeared in weekend newspapers, they are now largely anachronistic as most people access entertainment online and fewer have CD players

The Graun takes the oppportunity to lists other major setbacks (yet again)... 

German freight giant DB Schenker paused UK deliveries on Thursday, blaming increased paperwork, while companies including Fortnum and Mason have reported problems delivering to customers in the EU and Northern Ireland.

Marks & Spencer said it was concerned that a third of the products in its Irish food halls, including Percy Pigs, would now be subject to import tariffs. Meanwhile, international delivery giant DPD also said it was “pausing” road service from the UK into Europe last week.

 

Dutch confiscate our sandwiches!

The Graun continues to drip on and on. Is this really news or just something to give luvvies a chuckle over their pumpkin l;attes?

Leave.EU has left the UK, as Brexit forced the Eurosceptic campaign group to choose between its name and its country.

There are some bureaucratic hiccup stories. Here:

 Northern Ireland is facing disruptions to its food supply because suppliers in Great Britain are unaware of the Brexit-related paperwork needed to send goods to the region, business leaders have said.

 
And here

Scottish seafood firms say their businesses are in crisis because of Brexit-related delays and costs exporting fresh seafood and salmon to Europe....The extra paperwork, export certificates and Covid tests for drivers has added hundreds of pounds in costs to every shipment 

Generally, the BBC seems to have dug out some old Just-in-Tine stuff as well. It used to take 20 minutes to clear Customs, we were assured in one item, and now it takes 6 hours. So -- plan 6 hours in advance?  Bring your orders 6 hours forward? Too simple -- go out of business seems to be the preferred option.

I would have brought you the latest Keegan insight but that must wait because el Grauno doesn't like you reading more than 3 stories on their website. I'll do it tomorrow.

We may have avoided no-deal, but this is still Brexit tier 3 | Business | The Guardian

Meanwhile the Times has a cracker. For some reason it is not on the website but the headline of the article in our print version has :

Sandwiches Confiscated As Brexit Bites

The story concerned the Dutch police confiscating sandwiches from lorry drivers entering from Britain if the sandwiches contained prohibited meat or dairy products. Priceless examples of cosmopolitan sophistication.

We must retaliate immediately with a ban on inflatable sex toys from Amsterdam

Europe denied hampers and dogfood

Amidst the news of the Trump-inspired demos to prevent a transition to a Biden regime, as well as the growing covid crisis, of course, a refreshing Graun carp about another bureaucratic hiccup with Brexit, as if it were somehow equivalent:

Customers in Europe hit by post-Brexit charges when buying from UK

Shoppers tell of shock at unexpected bills for VAT or customs duty as some retailers stop shipping to continent

“Unfortunately, tariffs are not the same as customs duties,”...[who knew?] Customs duty is a charge that has to be paid on many goods imported into the EU from countries outside the European customs union – including Britain.

Paid on many goods, note. The rate is decided by the EU, of course. It used to affect the prices on goods sold in the UK too. Additional horrors include:

iconic British retailers as the luxury food store Fortnum & Mason were unfortunately “unable to send any products to European countries at this current time, due to Brexit restrictions”....John Lewis, also popular with British citizens living in the EU, who value its “never knowingly undersold” price match guarantee and reliable customer service, have also been disappointed....Until December, the retailer offered EU delivery for many items on sale through its website, including clothes. But anyone requesting shipping to Europe is now greeted by a page stating: “We are no longer taking orders for international delivery.” [anywhere?]

Some retailers, such as George at Asda, have promised no additional charges, but several international platforms including Asos have halted deliveries [only?] to Europe from their UK sites, instead directing buyers to national versions in, for example, France.

We need to know if this (temporary?) ban on international deliveries applies only to the EU or elsewhere as well, whether it is part of the general crisis affecting ports or whether it is specific to Brexit. It is not clear why specifically UK-located suppliers have always to be contacted anyway

David Martin, who lives in the Creuse region in central France, said he switched his regular order for dog food from the pet supplies company Zooplus to its Irish site after being told the UK platform was no longer accepting orders from the continent.

The Graun might help might explaining about alternative sources of supply in the short term, including local or Irish sites, but they would rather rely on the frisson of vicarious suffering as dogs starve and luxury food hampers run out. For balance, they add

According to a leading French consumer website, goods ordered from the UK worth less than €150 should not attract customs duty. Goods ordered from the UK worth more than that, whether produced in or outside Britain, will incur charges....

The rate varies according to the product, but the site cited [sic] trainers ordered from a UK website for £270 but manufactured in and shipped from China. Adding customs duty of 16.9% and 20% French VAT would bring their cost to about £378, it said.

Continental buyers should no longer be charged British VAT on their UK purchases [so does that include a component of UK VAT and customs duty in the £270 trainers?] but must pay local VAT in their country of residence, although this is waived for orders under €22 until 31 July. Platforms such as Amazon are entitled to collect continental VAT on orders worth less than €150 [but not UK VAT as well?]

“It’s a hugely complex situation,”... “My recommendation to anyone in the EU looking to buy goods in the UK is: don’t order anything until you know what the duty and VAT will be. And be patient. This should all sort itself out eventually, but it’s going to take some time.”

Guardian scores cheap points

Pretty shameless point-scoring in the Graun here (and even in the Times which had a similar headline): 

Mother fears son could die as Brexit stops medical cannabis supply

This poor kid developed a rare form of epilepsy , which might cause him to die. His mother found a form of medical cannabis which seems to offer some relief. Only a Dutch pharmaceutical company can supply it. After a campaign led by her, he can get it prescribed in the UK. Until now, the Dutch company was happy to fill UK prescriptions. Since Brexit, they are not happy to fill UK prescriptions or any opther overseas prescriptions that involve cannabis preparations. The Times, but not the Guardian, explains that this is Dutch law.  Dutch law, and the oversight of the negotiators of both sides, however understandable, might have inadvertently placed this kid in peril. He was in peril before Brexit, until his mother campaigned to alter what was then EU practice -- she had to go and live in Holland 'after money ran out'.

The UK Dept of Health seems to have handled this particular case rather insensitively, having realised the implications for this one case rather late  (the Times tells us 40 people are involved, although the Graun says 'only nine known boys worldwide' have this particular condition). So far they are suggesting alternative drugs,based on alternative recommendations by clinicians, but the mother of the child involved says this is unsatisfactory and might be dangerous. The Dept do seem to be taking a rather lofty and unsympathetic view:

to say ‘oh you can swap it for another product, sorry we can’t help’ it is grossly unacceptable. It’s very very dangerous and I’m really frightened about what is going to happen,” she said....[And]...Neurologist Mike Barnes who led the fight with the Home Office to get Bedrolite prescribed for Alfie accused the DHSC of “an astonishing level of ignorance” to think every cannabis product is the same when there are “147 different cannabinoids” in each plant in addition to terpenes which create very specific medical properties....“Each variety of cannabis is subtly different and you can’t just swap a child from one product to another,” he said.

That is not exactly the same as saying all alternatives are very dangerous, of course. The whole thing is nasty and looks unsympathetic -- but isolating Brexit as the major cause is shameless opportunism. Let's hope this case can be sorted out with a phone call and not some stupid governmental Barnier-type negotiation. 

It also shows how bankrupt Guardina ethics have become in a way which would shame liberal philosophers like JS Mill. Instead of engaging with complex issues where rival claims and rights have to be weighed, they go for some pious abstract sentimental appeal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Brexit, not bureaucracy, not EU intransigence, not negiotators' negligence tobalme:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/05/mother-fears-son-could-die-as-brexit-stops-medical-cannabis-medicine-supply

No soultion either

The darkest of all arts?

In the subtlest ploy yet, the Guardian decides to demoralise and weaken the resolve of supporters of the Johnson deal everywhere with this:

Tony Blair: I would have voted for Boris Johnson's post-Brexit trade deal

It's a double whammy, in fact because it goes on:

The former prime minister revealed he would have supported the Labour leader, Keir Starmer,

That's Starmer done for as well then.

Meanwhile, in one of the most stupid questions ever:

Asked if he would carry on as prime minister after Brexit, Johnson said: “Yes.”

Arise, Sir Larry, demands the Nation

For some extraordinary reason, the New Year's Honours List has once again omitted the sainted L Elliott, lone sane voice at the Graun. What a lonely furrow that man has been ploughing!. Here he is:

it is clear that the UK has deep, structural economic problems despite – and in some cases because of – almost half a century of EU membership. Since 1973, the manufacturing base has shrivelled, the trade balance has been in permanent deficit, and the north-south divide has widened. Free movement of labour has helped entrench Britain’s reputation as a low-investment, low-productivity economy. Brexit means that those farmers who want their fruit harvested will now have to do things that the left ought to want: pay higher wages or invest in new machinery....The part of the economy that has done best out of EU membership has been the bit that needed least help: the City of London. Each country in the EU has tended to specialise: the Germans do the high-quality manufactured goods; France does the food and drink; the UK does the money. 

it is equally obvious there are big problems with the EU as well: slow growth, high levels of unemployment, a rapidly ageing population. The single currency – which Britain fortunately never joined – has failed to deliver the promised benefits.

those predicting Armageddon for the UK imagine the EU to still be Germany’s miracle economy – the Wirtschaftswunder – of the 1960s. The reality is somewhat different. It is Italy, where living standards are no higher than they were when the single currency was introduced two decades ago. It is Greece, forced to accept ideologically motivated austerity in return for financial support. The four freedoms of the single market – no barriers to the movement of goods, services, people and capital – are actually the four pillars of neoliberalism.

Leaving the EU means UK governments no longer have anywhere to hide. They have economic levers they can pull – procurement, tax, ownership, regulation, investment in infrastructure, subsidies for new industries, trade policy – and they will come under pressure to use them.

Many on the remainer left accept the EU has its faults, but they fear that Brexit will be the start of something worse: slash and burn deregulation that will make Britain a nastier place to live.

This, though, assumes that Britain will have rightwing governments in perpetuity.

By contrast the sentimental conservatism and ability only to parrot old stuff of the Observer comes out well in this

the agreement that Boris Johnson struck with the European Union on Christmas Eve is no political triumph, no diplomatic feat. It will one day surely be regarded as one of the greatest-ever deceits inflicted on the British electorate. 

First there are the costs that will be measured in pounds and pence. This trade deal is unique in erecting rather than eliminating barriers to trade [export trade to the EU that is] . Goods will be subject to costly new customs and regulatory checks[no tariffs or quotas though] . Services – which make up 80% of the British economy – do not even get a look in. The economic consequences will be profound: the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast that in the long term [ha!], this kind of deal will reduce Britain’s long-run GDP by 4%,[Briefings for Brexit has a good piece on this --as usual, it depends how you calculate GDP]  dwarfing the long-run costs of the pandemic.

Then a shift of ground, not surprisingly, back to the vaguer and loftier stuff that Arts graduates feel more at home with:

But, as we wrote in 2016 [it didn't work then either] , the EU was always much more than an economic project. It was an idealistic undertaking to prevent the continent ever again being racked by war [on their soil anyway]. Decades later, we live in a world marked by new types of instability. The biggest global challenges we face – the climate crisis, global pandemics, international tax avoidance on an eyewatering scale – can be tackled only through nation states acting in concert, rather than alone.

This, together with the fact that we live in a globalised world where the most successful countries choose regulatory alignment in order to facilitate trade, puts paid to the isolationist and old-fashioned notions of national sovereignty trumpeted by the small-minded politics of the Leave campaign.

Oh no! We will lose influence

generation after generation of politicians have shaped the EU from the inside. This deal will diminish the UK’s global influence not just from the perspective of our national interest but in terms of our wider international responsibilities as one of the world’s richest liberal democracies.

A few contradictory views about democracy and political attitudes:

The British public is far more pragmatic than the right of the Conservative party: a citizens’ assembly in 2017 suggested that people were prepared to accept free movement of people in order to minimise the economic costs of Brexit...]Yet]...the  country has been governed by a party captured by an unholy alliance of populists and hard-right ideologues. The Vote Leave campaign misled the public by spreading racist dogwhistles about immigration and by misusing official statistics to promise that Brexit would deliver a huge boost to the NHS [still there!]. These lies were endorsed by politicians like Boris Johnson and Michael Gove who both surely knew that an honest case for Brexit was not strong enough to win a popular vote...crass sloganeering has substituted for responsible government. 

The citizen's assembly, incidentally, is described via the link and can be examined here  It's not bad -- but very small. It consisted of either 50 or 'around 45' citizens selected rigorously and 'at random' while 'reflecting the diversity of the UK population' -- ie a stratified sample --drawn within a YouGov sample. They reflected diversity in demographic terms mostly, although one factor, of unknown weight, was whether they voted Leave or Remain (or reported they had). They met over two weekends and discussed the issues --unsurprisingly, they evidently found themselves compromising.  The views of those 50 people were not the result of being misled, of course. The Observer clearly thinks their views should outweigh the views of the whole electorate and the Parliamentary process.

Talking of crass sloganeering...

... great cost to people’s personal freedoms: to make a life, to study, to start a business or to fall in love in another country....This hard Brexit will also deepen rifts within the union. Most immediately, it will give succour to the cause of Scottish independence

Eric will never love Juliette because he will have to go to all the bother of getting a visa if he wants to stay in France longer than 30 days in any 90 to woo her.

As for Scots nattery --surely the Observer will oppose? Didn't it say just now that the way forward was not nationalism but shared sovereignty?

And hope, always hope... We shall overcome...We have the moral victory...

there surely lies a better, brighter future for Britain that will one day come to pass.