Britain outside the EU

[jfman]

A business paying excessive costs to cover “worst case scenarios” loses business to the one down the road who isn’t paying out unnecessary costs and strips down what is needed to reduce costs/increase profits. That’s the profit seeking motive and entrepreneurial spirit in a nutshell.

---------- Post added at 08:49 ---------- Previous post was at 08:45 ----------

Originally Posted by Chris

So a £100 transaction attracts £1.50 in fees where previously it was 30p. Sorry but the financial system does actually cost money to operate, inconvenient as that might be, and international transactions cost more. The EU has had a good go at making laws trying to paper over the fact that these were international transactions but in this case those laws are only 5 years old. I’m not going to lose sleep over £1.20. I’d spend more time thinking about whether to spend the £100 in the first place.

I don’t think it’s about the individual £1.50 - can probably find it down the back of the sofa.

It’s about the inefficiencies this creates across the whole economy as it aggregates over all transactions. This is money being extracted from UK customers they not don’t have to spend elsewhere.

[jonbxx]

Originally Posted by Hugh

No one ever plans for "worst case scenarios" - we planned for the loss of one site out of three geographically diverse sites, we never planned for losing two or three, because the implication was that the country had been nuked or bio/chem attacks had crippled the country, so no one would really be that fussed about education or financial lending in that scenario.

We are talking about small to medium businesses here - after the Brexit Referendum, everyone (inc. businesses) were told that a deal would be reached; it’s only in the last year or so that things "heated up" and the likelihood of "no deal" became apparent; this is at the same time as COVID hit, so no, most of the people I know who run small businesses (employing under a hundred people) had contingency plans in place for a No Deal Brexit, because they didn’t know what the impact of that would be.

Yeah, business continuity is a great of scary subject! There's a good reason why the company I work for has its manufacturing in relatively safe countries in terms of political and environmental safety. It's expensive but worth it ad it gets you a nice ISO 22301 certificate. Even then, companies can get caught out. We had a major crisis when a critical raw material went off line as it was made in a factory in Fukoshima, Japan a while back.

My company was lucky in a sense as we mainly import goods as we only have a small amount of manufacturing in the UK but our central warehouse is in the EU. However, we have a centralised customer service team which includes people who serve non-EU/EEA countries (Russia, Israel, middle east etc.) People working in that 'export' team were able to train up the UK customer service team and we have grown the UK team by 30% to handle the extra work. The costing was £450k to set everything up with an ongoing £150k per year

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by 1andrew1

Not every person or business is as fortunate as you as to not worry about covering increased costs.

Best not to buy from the EU, then. Their loss.

[jfman]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

Best not to buy from the EU, then. Their loss.

As ever a laughably simplistic analysis from OB that demonstrates entrepreneurial spirit that he speaks of is simply a punchline in posts he presumably takes entertainment value from.

Someone who did have any understanding of entrepreneurial spirit would know that not every item, of the same quality, is available either in the UK or from elsewhere at the same (or lower) costs, or without tariffs or other increased costs from the rest of the world. Indeed, if this was possible people oozing this mythical entrepreneurial spirit would already be doing so and not reliant upon items from the EU.

Either way these increased costs represent waste and a higher cost to end users.

[OLD BOY]

Oh, dear, the EU is looking on embarrassed by the fact that Brexit Britain is streets ahead with the procurement and distribution of the Covid vaccine.

This is the first example of how a newly freed Britain, quick and nimble on its feet, can cut the bureaucracy and actually deliver.

I am sure that EU apologists would have preferred to have overlooked this development, but there will be many more examples down the line on why it was a good move to escape the clutches of the bureaucratic EU.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Hugh

No one ever plans for "worst case scenarios" - we planned for the loss of one site out of three geographically diverse sites, we never planned for losing two or three, because the implication was that the country had been nuked or bio/chem attacks had crippled the country, so no one would really be that fussed about education or financial lending in that scenario.

You plan for "reasonable worst case scenario" of the perceived situation , obviously because as you say a worst case scenario could be anything...... from the planet being hit by a comet, to a nuclear attack from North Korea.

We are talking about small to medium businesses here - after the Brexit Referendum, everyone (inc. businesses) were told that a deal would be reached; it’s only in the last year or so that things "heated up" and the likelihood of "no deal" became apparent; this is at the same time as COVID hit, so no, most of the people I know who run small businesses (employing under a hundred people) had contingency plans in place for a No Deal Brexit, because they didn’t know what the impact of that would be.

We haven't got a "no deal Brexit" but it was absolutely clear from the start the our relationship with the EU was going to change - it was either going to change a lot or a little but it was going to change.

they should have called no deal earlier or got an extension, getting a deal so close to deadline caused these problems not businesses

This is a fair point and the correct thing to do would have been to agree a much longer transition period after the deal was to agreed so that both sides could ensure that they could complete all the necessary paperwork and regulations.

---------- Post added at 11:32 ---------- Previous post was at 11:28 ----------

Originally Posted by jfman

A business paying excessive costs to cover “worst case scenarios” loses business to the one down the road who isn’t paying out unnecessary costs and strips down what is needed to reduce costs/increase profits. That’s the profit seeking motive and entrepreneurial spirit in a nutshell.

or The business that investigates the outcomes of potential scenarios and mitigates against them continues to trade where the one down the road that saved money and didn't can't trade and goes out of business. Smart entrepreneurial spirit in a nutshell.

[jfman]

Only if the business that spends excessive amounts planning against Government policy on mitigation doesn't go out of business first.

Rational capitalism strips off unnecessary costs wherever it can.

[Sephiroth]

The vaccine row is an acid test of the UK's ability to act independently in it's citizens' interests.

[Sephiroth]

Joglynne posted this somewhere that I can't find now:

EU triggers Brexit clause after just 29 days as Commission panics over vaccine chaos THE European Union has triggered a Brexit clause less than a month after the UK left the bloc as Brussels panics over the coronavirus vaccine chaos.
---End Quote---
https://emea01.safelinks.protection....amp;reserved=0

When you read the EU statement, it's a load of gobbledegook.

The decoded version is at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-55864442

The EU is introducing controls on vaccines made in the bloc to prevent their export to Northern Ireland, amid a row about delivery shortfalls.

Talk about a hostile act. Be in no doubt.

[joglynne]

Thanks for posting my link in this thread Sephiroth.

Wondered which thread to post it in. It does go to show how closely our leaving the EU is tied into their stance on their trying to control the corona vaccines supplies.

[nomadking]

1. If the application of this Protocol leads to serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade, the Union or the United Kingdom may unilaterally take appropriate safeguard measures. Such safeguard measures shall be restricted with regard to their scope and duration to what is strictly necessary in order to remedy the situation. Priority shall be given to such measures as will least disturb the functioning of this Protocol.

Nothing has actually happened, so how can the EU that it has led to anything? These "serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties" have to be actually occurring right now and before, for them to be able to invoke this.

1. Where the Union or the United Kingdom is considering taking safeguard measures under Article 16(1) of this Protocol, it shall, without delay, notify the Union or the United Kingdom, as the case may be, through the Joint Committee and shall provide all relevant information.
2. The Union and the United Kingdom shall immediately enter into consultations in the Joint Committee with a view to finding a commonly acceptable solution.
3. The Union or the United Kingdom, as the case may be, may not take safeguard measures until 1 month has elapsed after the date of notification under point 1, unless the consultation procedure under point 2 has been concluded before the expiration of the state limit. When exceptional circumstances requiring immediate action exclude prior examination, the Union or the United Kingdom, as the case may be, may apply forthwith the protective measures strictly necessary to remedy the situation.

When did any of that happen?

[Sephiroth]

An enormous amount of water has passed under the bridge since yesterday. The EU has reversed its hasty and indeed unlawful decision to invoke Article 16(1) of the Protocol.

But what I wanted to say was that the vaccine incident has proved how right we are to be outside the EU. Commerce and economic output are dormant for now on both sides of the channel. So the economic argument for remaining in the EU is not currently applicable. Both sides have to pick up when this is all over - so Brexit happened at exactly the right time.

When/if the EU tries to rebuild its economy, how would we have fared within the EU?
We'd be paying in, but we wouldn't get back more than a fraction of that. Whereas no, we determine how we can fund our own development without worrying about/paying for Italy or Greece or Croatia, etc.

The Remainers have been remarkably quiet as the EU has exposed itself for the bungling institution that they are, well surpassing our own government in its incompetence.

It must be obvious to the Remainers that we now take the decisions and thank goodness for that.

[Pierre]

There will be economic bumps in the road to be certain, and every time there is there will be a Remainer popping up from behind the hedge saying “I told you so”.

What this current situation has shown is that there is benefit for being an agile Sovereign nation that can work quickly in the best interests of itself and not have to worry about the needs and wants of 20odd other countries and to be able to do things directly yourself instead of ceding power to a bunch of bureaucrats.

It has also shown that the unelected bureaucracy have no problem in ignoring sovereignty of its members by imposing a hard border on one its member states with out even the courtesy of speaking to that nations leader.

If they do it once they can do it again over lots of things.

They’ve also shown, in the face of a crisis that they have very little political skill or finesse, and all they can do is throw, ineffectively, their weight around, stamp their feet, threaten etc.

All in all it’s been a very bad few days for the EU, and it has been on show for all.

Unsurprisingly, little has been made of it on the usual mainstream media outlets.

[joglynne]

The last 2 posts by Seph and Pierre say everything that I wanted to. So thank you guys.

Originally Posted by Pierre

Unsurprisingly, little has been made of it on the usual mainstream media outlets.

Really? It was the main news item yesterday on BBC, Channel 4 and led almost all the newspapers this morning.