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Brexit matters

Dave1987

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I would expect it to be a mixture of switching to domestic, buying from non EU countries and residual buying from EU.

As to the proportions, the more awkward the EU make it, the better the business case for switching to the other two.

As to carbon emissions, I would expect that to be fairly minor. Indeed if they come by ship to Tilbury they will probably have a lower footprint than oranges that are trucked on diesel lorries from Spain.
Transportation of oranges by ship from South Africa to the UK would be very slow. And most big cargo ships do a set route via Rotterdam and then Felixstowe or London Gateway to save costs. So your imported Oranges from South Africa will already have used most of their shelf life on the journey to the UK if they come by ship. Either that or you get a fleet of ships specifically to transport Oranges etc from South Africa to UK ports bypassing the International shipping routines which would be very very expensive. There is a reason why imported goods via shipping takes around three weeks because the ships have specific routes they follow for efficiency.
 
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21C101

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That rather depends on the quantity of Oranges being shipped, which at the moment will be rather lower than it might otherwise be due to the EU 16% tariffs to protect growers in Spain etc.
 

najaB

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Those further down the food chain saw salaries stagnate and working conditions degenerate into insecure zero hours contracts as "companies could take advantage of cheaper foreign labour to do the jobs" we did want to do, for far less than we did them for.
Somewhat better than "move the jobs to cheaper countries..." much as some of our Bexit-supporting businesspeople are now doing.

That rather depends on the quantity of Oranges being shipped, which at the moment will be rather lower than it might otherwise be due to the EU 16% tariffs to protect growers in Spain etc.
Rainbows, unicorns and oranges...
 

Dave1987

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That rather depends on the quantity of Oranges being shipped, which at the moment will be rather lower than it might otherwise be due to the EU 16% tariffs to protect growers in Spain etc.
Crikey are you really suggesting that all of a sudden we are going to be able to source top-quality fruit that can last the trip on a cargo ship via normal shipping routes and still have sufficient shelf life. The only real option is via air freight which is more expensive and more polluting. And all to stick two fingers up at that nasty horrible dictatorship they call the EU eh!
 

21C101

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Crikey are you really suggesting that all of a sudden we are going to be able to source top-quality fruit that can last the trip on a cargo ship via normal shipping routes and still have sufficient shelf life. The only real option is via air freight which is more expensive and more polluting. And all to stick two fingers up at that nasty horrible dictatorship they call the EU eh!
We somehow managed it in the 1930s when they had to come by boat and South Africa was the main source.

Anyway, whether you like it or not, it its happening. The UK(GB) has already binned the EUs phytosanitary regulations and the South Africans are gearing up to increase exports of oranges and other citrus bigly:

"What this means is that South African (and other) producers can now export citrus fruits and leaves to Great Britain without needing a phytosanitary certificate or having to give advanced notice of their intention. This both reduces bureaucracy and allows producers to respond more rapidly to changes in British market demand.

However, this does not equate simplistically with a regime of no restrictions. The UK will continue to monitor issues such as risk and changes in the needs of Great Britain."

 

raetiamann

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Well South African oranges, who would have thought. Now that's a huge step and worth the billions Brexit has cost us.

Apologies for the sarcasm, but really.
 

Dave1987

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We somehow managed it in the 1930s when they had to come by boat and South Africa was the main source.

Anyway, whether you like it or not, it its happening. The UK(GB) has already binned the EUs phytosanitary regulations and the South Africans are gearing up to increase exports of oranges and other citrus bigly:

"What this means is that South African (and other) producers can now export citrus fruits and leaves to Great Britain without needing a phytosanitary certificate or having to give advanced notice of their intention. This both reduces bureaucracy and allows producers to respond more rapidly to changes in British market demand.

However, this does not equate simplistically with a regime of no restrictions. The UK will continue to monitor issues such as risk and changes in the needs of Great Britain."

Come off it you cannot compare the 1930's to modern shipping. Modern-day international shipping involves huge container vessels that circle the globe and spend hours and hours docked in ports being loaded and unloaded at their various ports of call. They are very very different to the ships of the 1930's that were tiny in comparison and shipping worked in a completely different manner. I very much know that Brexit has for the hardcore Brexiteers has become 'Brexit at any cost'. I am sure that you hardcore Brexiteers would happily see the most massively inefficient trade routes open just so long as it enables the UK to reduce trade with the EU. This has gone way beyond "sovereignty", this is turning into a pathological hatred of the EU. It is certainly going to make NATO and International meetings very very interesting. Blimey, shipping oranges halfway across the globe just to stick two fingers up at Spain, that is Brexit in a nutshell.
 

Puffing Devil

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Worth clarifying I think.

HMRC Notice 143

Perhaps a little further clarification.....

Items under £135 are not free of VAT - the expectation is that the supplier is both registered with the UK HMRC and collects the appropriate VAT on the purchase

Border Operating Model
Businesses selling goods to be imported into the UK with a value not exceeding £135
will be required to charge and collect any VAT due at the time of sale. Businesses
selling goods to be imported into the UK will be required to register for VAT in the UK
and to account for the VAT due on their VAT return.

Unsurprisingly, many businesses have declined the opportunity to become an unpaid tax collector for the UK government and have ditched the UK market for now. Some are continuing to send without charging the VAT and many of these shipments are being captured by the Border Force who are collecting the tax and the carriers are charging admin fees.

Your gifts over £39 will be subject to VAT.

Lovely.
 

py_megapixel

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The average consumer does not care where their oranges come from, and will not stop buying oranges based on the country of origin.

I would therefore argue that importing them from southern Europe is considerably preferable to importing them from Africa, purely because it eliminates the need to pointlessly ship them thousands of additional miles.
 

21C101

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Come off it you cannot compare the 1930's to modern shipping. Modern-day international shipping involves huge container vessels that circle the globe and spend hours and hours docked in ports being loaded and unloaded at their various ports of call. They are very very different to the ships of the 1930's that were tiny in comparison and shipping worked in a completely different manner. I very much know that Brexit has for the hardcore Brexiteers has become 'Brexit at any cost'. I am sure that you hardcore Brexiteers would happily see the most massively inefficient trade routes open just so long as it enables the UK to reduce trade with the EU. This has gone way beyond "sovereignty", this is turning into a pathological hatred of the EU. It is certainly going to make NATO and International meetings very very interesting. Blimey, shipping oranges halfway across the globe just to stick two fingers up at Spain, that is Brexit in a nutshell.
The 1930s comment was in response to your concern that it would take too long by boat from SA and they would all be spoiled.

The rest seems to be hypeebole that I'm not going to dignify with a response.

The average consumer does not care where their oranges come from, and will not stop buying oranges based on the country of origin.

I would therefore argue that importing them from southern Europe is considerably preferable to importing them from Africa, purely because it eliminates the need to pointlessly ship them thousands of additional miles.
They will be shipped from whever has the best combination on price, quality and reliability.

As the UK is one of the biggest worldwide receivers of South African citrus despite them up to now having a 16% tariff and EU regulatory delays and complications that Spanish citrus has been exempt from, the removal of said tariff and simplification of import regulations will not be to Spains advantage and South Africa will increase market share bigly.
 

edwin_m

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*some* of us enjoyed good salaries.

Those further down the food chain saw salaries stagnate and working conditions degenerate into insecure zero hours contracts as "companies could take advantage of cheaper foreign labour to do the jobs" we did want to do, for far less than we did them for.

Many organisations such as food retailers opened nice new distribution centres staffed mainly with eastern europeans on minimum wage, then shortly afterwards shut down perfectly good existing distribution centres staffed by mainly british people on nearer £15-£20 an hour and made them all redundant.

Similarly, many construction workers earn little more if any than they did 20 years ago, and in some cases less, as the pay cap is the amount a chap from Romania is willing to do the work for.

Hence the referendum result.

I expect one unspoken effect of Brexit to be inflation driven by wage inflation, coupled with asset deflation, accompanied by howls of outrage from those who benefitted from the status quo up to now. We will return to the historic situation up to the 90s where we generally have higher inflation than Europe.
That's an argument for better labour protection and a higher minimum wage in the UK, which I would certainly support. But it's the responsibility of the Westminster government not the EU. The government that now has sole control over our destiny, and is threatening to remove employment protections that the EU provided.
 

RT4038

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Surely it would be better for the economy for the government to be taking actions that increase tax revenues by encouraging business growth, rather than increasing tax on their inputs (and so suppressing growth)?

Edit: As an aside, it's interesting to see a Brexit supporter who isn't right-wing. Who would have thought someone would support both Brexit and increased taxation to provide public services, rather than being pro-free market, small government.

That depends on the economic policy that is being followed - Higher taxes on imports will encourage exporters (who will be affected in reverse) to switch to import substitution. Will there be anguish in the process - yes.

You are making some pretty big assumptions on my views! My comment in post #1496 did say 'could mean more public services' ; this is an option with no indication as to whether I would support that.
I think it is essential that all views on a particular subject are aired and debated; there is no one answer to such a complex situation. I do think that failure to address some underlying issues, ignoring views (on both sides) that were not much liked because they didn't find into a received wisdom, has resulted in the current situation.

However, we are where we are. The effort now needs to be on making the future work best.
 

21C101

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That's an argument for better labour protection and a higher minimum wage in the UK, which I would certainly support. But it's the responsibility of the Westminster government not the EU. The government that now has sole control over our destiny, and is threatening to remove employment protections that the EU provided.
The UK government has increased the minimum wage a fair bit in recent years.

They have committed not to removing employee and H&S protections. Yes they are reviewing the legislation but that is to see if they can be administered in a less costly way than the way the EU requires.

As they have lost a good number of wealthy voters in the south, London in particular, to Lib Dem and Labour, so therefore depend for a majority on working class voters in the midlands and north who have historically voted Labour, it is not in their political interest to replicate third world labour laws, even if a few of their wilder backbenchers might want them to.
 

Puffing Devil

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They have committed not to removing employee and H&S protections. Yes they are reviewing the legislation but that is to see if they can be administered in a less costly way than the way the EU requires.

Comical. This government has broken so many promises I've lost count.

And their record for "less costly" is less than stellar - Track and Trace, anyone?
 

Revilo

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Which, from the Tories at the moment, means diddly-squat.
If you disagree with the Tories being in power then you can vote them out at the next election. It’s called democracy, something that Remainers only support when it helps their cause.
 

py_megapixel

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If you disagree with the Tories being in power then you can vote them out at the next election. It’s called democracy, something that Remainers only support when it helps their cause.
I don't have the slightest clue what you're on about.

The point I was making was that, in my opinion, the Tories are untrustworthy. Are you trying to suggest that because I have the right to vote them out, I am not allowed to hold negative opinions about the party currently in power?

I think you'll also find that Brexiteers aren't a huge fan of democracy when it doesn't help their cause either.
 

najaB

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If you disagree with the Tories being in power then you can vote them out at the next election. It’s called democracy, something that Remainers only support when it helps their cause.
There's sod all we can do about it until 2024 though is there?
 

21C101

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There's sod all we can do about it until 2024 though is there?
Would you prefer a referendum on every act before parliament?

That would be fun! Exhausting though.

The way things are at the moment the Tories will win comfortably in 2024. 42-37 ahead in tonights opinion poll.

The left needs to stop fretting about Brexit and start campaigning for a positive alternative vision for the UK if they are to have a chance.
 

birchesgreen

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That's the problem, too many from the left and many remainers want to re-fight the last war. I'd love to hear some positive vision for whats next from the opposition.
 

Revilo

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There's sod all we can do about it until 2024 though is there?

But at least you can do something about then, whereas our democratic influence on EU legislation minimal. And in practice the Government of the day has to be more accountable because it can’t hide behind EU legislation.
 

Revilo

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They didn’t engage because (1) The EU was seen as remote and out of touch, inevitable given its size (2) the MEPs had little influence on what actually happened in the EU.
 

Revilo

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This is often said, but frequency of repetition is not a measure of factual exactitude.
I’m afraid it’s true, which is why it’s repeated so often. The European Parliament cannot propose laws, only vote to amend or reject them - only the Commission can propose laws. And in some cases the EP’s vote is not binding only advisory, that the Commission only has to consider.

 

najaB

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The European Parliament cannot propose laws, only vote to amend or reject them - only the Commission can propose laws.
Not entirely true. While only the Commission can draft a law, the parliament decides which laws it wants the commission to work on:

What does the Parliament do?​

The Parliament has 3 main roles:

Legislative​

  • Passing EU laws, together with the Council of the EU, based on European Commission proposals
  • Deciding on international agreements
  • Deciding on enlargements
  • Reviewing the Commission's work programme and asking it to propose legislation

In addition, the Commission only sits with the approval of the Parliament:

Supervisory​

  • Democratic scrutiny of all EU institutions
  • Electing the Commission President and approving the Commission as a body. Possibility of voting a motion of censure, obliging the Commission to resign
  • Granting discharge, i.e. approving the way EU budgets have been spent
  • Examining citizens' petitions and setting up inquiries
  • Discussing monetary policy with the European Central Bank
  • Questioning Commission and Council
  • Election observations
(My bold) - Source: https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/institutions-bodies/european-parliament_en
 

21C101

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Only because people chose not to engage in European parliamentary elections.
Only having 10% of the seats might be one reason for that.

Plenty engaged in 2019, when they used them as a weapon to defenestrate Mrs May, cutting the Tories share of the vote to 9% and triggering panicked backbenchers to send the letters to the 1922 committee.

Must have been the only election in history where the majority of Tory members voted for a different party.
 

class ep-09

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If its worth less than £135 then its exempt from customs anyway.

I regularly order similarly priced items on Amazon that are shipped direct from China, Korea, Japan, US etc all the time and it just turns up at the alloted time with a completed customs declaration statement. No surcharge or undue delay. So this is just the EU being awkward.

And their reward will be that people increasingly buy such goods domestically or from places such as US and China instead of EU suppliers.

And as we currently buy £70 billion more goods a year from the EU than we sell to them, they have a lot more to lose than us.


And you appear to make out like red wall voters are thick, gullible and unable to understand complex political issues.


Yes to your last sentence.
We do .


As for buying more “domestically” , there is no chance that I would ever buy “ British substitute “ to a German car for example .

Corporations exploiting eastern Europeans as a source of cheap labour to drive down everybodys wages is a particularly unpleasant form of racism.


No we just revert to importing better quality Oranges from South Africa, at a much better price, now that we are no longer obliged by the EU to charge a 16% import tariff on them.

Ok
0% tariffs on oranges from S Africa and 0% tariffs on oranges from Spain ( because of BoJo’s deal).

Guess , which will be cheaper to buy ( hint : closer geographically ) ?
 
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21C101

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Ok
0% tariffs on oranges from S Africa and 0% tariffs on oranges from Spain ( because of BoJo’s deal).

Guess , which will be cheaper to buy ( hint : closer geographically ) ?
See comment on relative maritime shipping costs vs trucking costs upthread.
 

Dave1987

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There is one thing for certain in all this. Relations between the EU and the UK are extremely strained. I would go as far as to suggest relations have not been this strained in decades. I find attitudes like @21C101 of comparing the EU to a brutal dictatorship absolutely abhorrent. The pure fact that straight after we have left the EU the BoJo Govt's very first review is into workers rights is self-evident as to the great things about the EU. The EU has many many faults but every worker is entitled to rest breaks, holiday pay, overtime payments among other protections. Would a brutal dictatorship have such good workers rights protections? I doubt it!!
 

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