Re: Brexit
 

How outrageous to have an outage when your on a roll ;)

Re: Brexit
 

So true! I am not sure "your on a roll" though :)

Re: Brexit
 

I take it you walked around before the referendum with your fingers in your ears then?

How about the leaflet that was posted through your door, for a start.

Read Chris’s post, no point me repeating it.

Re: Brexit
 

I had a strange thought at work . . and it made me chuckle . . so I'm hoping some of you clever people on here can answer something that is now puzzling me.

There are plans being made (including the recent 'test' shambles) to turn parts of motorways into huge lorry parks if a 'no deal' Brexit goes ahead . . with me so far?

The assumption is that Lorries will be delayed access to European destinations due to the change in Customs checks etc . . still with me?

So, onto my question . . . if a 'no deal' Brexit means we have no trade with the EU, where the heck are these thousands of lorries going, and what with?

it's like - the local shop ceases trading and they still expect queues of shoppers outside the door :)

Re: Brexit
 

There will be trade, but there will also be customs checks, so fewer lorries per day will be able to pass through each port, especially while HMRC staff get used to things. At the moment the throughput of vehicles through our channel ports and the infrastructure for allowing them to arrive and depart is all built on the assumption that they don’t need to hang around.

It is entirely possible for the U.K. and the EU to implement trusted partner schemes that will remove most of the admin that will cause delays in the short term, but that is going to require more creativity and goodwill than has been on show thus far.

Don’t forget, it is decades since the EU has had to deal with a major, global, non-member economy on its immediate border. In a sense you have to forgive them for being so inflexible. They’ve been used to dictating terms to smaller neighbours. But we will get there, and ultimately, especially in the event of No Deal, it will be the Irish that are screaming for it, because whatever chaos you see at Dover will be wrought a hundred times worse on the entire Irish economy.

Re: Brexit
 

Yes I understand that, but surely there will be a massive reduction in the lorries using these facilities ;)

Re: Brexit
 

Well, we're gonna find out soon enough

Re: Brexit
 

It's kind of muddled to be fair because of the 'Rotterdam Effect' where a proportion of extra-EU trade for the UK goes via other ports in the EU. Currently, once goods are cleared in one EU country, they become EU goods and can be moved anywhere, including the UK. No one really traces this because, with the CM and SM, we haven't needed to beyond rough and ready calculations

Of course, after the end of March, if we go WTO and treat the EU under MFN rules, then it might be advantageous to unload and clear goods in the UK rather than a port in another country in the EU. Because of this, we probably move from Roll on-Roll off truck transport of goods internationally to containerised transport in big ships. This would need at least some expansion of our container ports such as Tilbury and Felixstowe, including transport links for trucks going to and from those ports.

So, if our imports and exports remain the same but we reduce trade with the EU, then the trucks of the UK distribution system will go to other ports - lots of short domestic hops rather than trans-continental transport.

Of course, everything comes down to cost, it may still be cheaper and more convenient to stack the trucks up at our Ro-Ro ports than restructuring our current distribution system for goods in the UK.

TL:DR - dunno.

Re: Brexit
 

As before, we chose collectively as a nation to leave, The EU can play hardball or be as inflexible as they wish. It's their club, we don't get to dictate the terms on our departure.

Re: Brexit
 

We’re not trying to dictate the rules of their club. They paid scant regard to our views when we were in it, I don’t think anyone has any illusions that they are going to listen to us now.

The question is what kind of economic and security relations they want to have with one of the world’s principal powers (and no, you don’t have to be an empire-obsessed Colonel Blimp to acknowledge our position in the world), especially one they happen to share a common border with.

The problem, as I’ve said, is that they haven’t had to deal with such circumstances before. They are accustomed to dictating terms and thus far they have got away with it because the purists in Brussels have been in charge - apparatchiks who don’t answer to any electorate and won’t lose their jobs no matter how hard this hits any European economy. If we end up in a No Deal scenario there will be real-world consequences for real European voters, and inevitably European politicians will then begin to attend to their own interests.

Re: Brexit
 

They paid so little regard we got £5bn back out of nastiness.

Re: Brexit
 

Au contraire - we quietly reminded the French that CAP was designed as the unofficial means by which Germany paid reparations to France after 1945, and suggested that if they wanted to continue benefiting from it, their interests would be best served by ensuring the U.K. wasn’t unuly disadvantaged by it (due to having a relatively industrialised, efficient agricultural sector). They agreed. The CAP rules continue to be wonky, they continue to subsidise France’s ludicrous 19th century farming sector, and thanks to Margaret Thatcher (and despite Tony Blair) we aren’t the ones paying for it.

Despite the loud protestations coming from the Élysée Palace, the British rebate is all about preserving French interests.

Re: Brexit
 

How would that actually work? We would still need customs checks and the delays they're estimating for such checks are measured in seconds. It's still going to be pretty quick...

Re: Brexit
 

Sounds like not a bad deal for the French or us, all the while preserving German hegemony.

Re: Brexit
 

The point was that France would feed Germany, and Germany would pay (handsomely) for it. The formula that works out agricultural payments was devised with that in mind - that’s why it continues to work so well for France and why it doesn’t work so well for us, and why France was supportive (at the time) of the rebate. It wasn’t in their interests to have a British PM with British interests at heart, rocking the boat too hard in favour of CAP reform.

Enter Tony Blair of course and all bets were off - the French (rightly) deduced that Blair was such a Europhile they could screw some more money out of the U.K. by reducing the rebate, in return for some extremely vague words designed to suggest they might agree to talk about minor CAP reform at some point in the future.

Our rebate was reduced, with Blair’s agreement, and the CAP continues pretty much unchanged. Happily, from March the U.K. can begin devising a system of agricultural support that works for the British economy and the British environment.