Brexit.

[Sid]

Don't color me surprised.
The new regulations are only agreed upon 25 days ago.

And I think this reply in that thread pretty much nails it:



And if transport companies can find easier loads for their lorries, they will not hesitate to opt for those, without the extra paperwork and waiting times driving into the UK.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Bad as it is, there has been enough time to plan ahead for all business. And many companies I know planned for the worst case right from the beginning, which is no deal hard brexit.

So this company we could say positively hoped for the best or probably more realistically was sleeping/didn't pay much attention. And then this happens. Either way that's not a good way to run a company. Always hope for the best, but expect the worst.

By the way fiscal representative sounds easier than it is. These are highly experienced customs professionals, doing an awful lot of paperwork for you.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Everyone knew this would be the outcome, just as everyone knew that that the first few months would be chaos, even with a deal, because so few businesses in the UK or the EU had prepared themselves adequately (everyone's had Covid-19 to worry about, after all).

That post is simply an example, as are the others, of what we knew would happen but were told was simply "Project Fear" when we raised it.

You can imagine how people in the US who were advocating masks and lockdowns must have felt when Trump was denying there was a problem, and people were partying on regardless, and saying it was all a hoax got up by the Democrats?

Well, that's been happening here, slow motion, ever since the referendum campaign. This is what we were warning them would happen, we were told it was Project Fear, and we kept saying, no, this is how the single market works, and what will happen as inevitably as night follows day, and Johnson and Gove and the ERG kept on saying, no of course it wouldn't, and now it is happening, and will carry on happening.

I am somewhat less than pleased at this course of events, as you can imagine, but it's happening, just as Covid is, and events will take their course -- I've known what was coming, and have been able to prepare my affairs and myself so that our leaving the EU doesn't now really affect me one way or the other, but others have not been so fortunate, and I feel both sorrow and anger for them, no matter how they voted.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Spoiler: Derp.

aw. They deleted their tweet.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Spoiler: I guess it makes me a bit of an arse for enjoying these

 

[Arkady Arkright]

Everyone knew this would be the outcome, just as everyone knew that that the first few months would be chaos, even with a deal, because so few businesses in the UK or the EU had prepared themselves adequately (everyone's had Covid-19 to worry about, after all).
...
I am somewhat less than pleased at this course of events, as you can imagine, but it's happening, just as Covid is, and events will take their course -- I've known what was coming, and have been able to prepare my affairs and myself so that our leaving the EU doesn't now really affect me one way or the other, but others have not been so fortunate, and I feel both sorrow and anger for them, no matter how they voted.

AKA "Turns out we really are fucked, after all.."

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Everyone knew this would be the outcome, just as everyone knew that that the first few months would be chaos, even with a deal, because so few businesses in the UK or the EU had prepared themselves adequately (everyone's had Covid-19 to worry about, after all).

Corona is more or less one year old, the Brexit intermission was four. More than enough time to prepare yourself.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Corona is more or less one year old, the Brexit intermission was four. More than enough time to prepare yourself.

Obviously I don't know what effect Covid-19 is having on freight and distribution in Germany, but over here it's been having a significant impact all aspects of daily life, including the freight industry, throughout the year, as businesses struggle to cope with working from home, staff illness, new working practices necessitated by government regulations, social distancing, and so forth. Distribution companies, in particular, have had to adapt themselves to a rapidly changing situation throughout the year because the whole pattern of their work has been disrupted, because their customers' businesses have been so greatly affected, on an ever-changing basis.

Unfortunately, that didn't change as the end of last year approached -- indeed, the epidemic worsened, as the autumn and winter drew on, exactly as it's done throughout Europe, and didn't let up because of Brexit, so I really don't see why you seem to suggest the fact people's businesses had already been disrupted for 9 months by Covid-19 by January 1st and will continue to be disrupted for much of this year, at least, has done anything but worsen the disruption caused for both the EU and the UK by Brexit.

Similarly, while companies have had four years of the EU and the UK preparing for Brexit, they've had the details only since Christmas.

Everyone knew it was going to be chaos -- that's what people tried to warn about before the referendum, and that's why people in the UK have spent the last 4 years trying unsuccessfully to argue that the government should have been negotiating to stay in the single market, or at least to minimise the friction that leaving it has inevitably caused, but HMG didn't want to listen.

Things are now happening pretty much exactly as everyone in the EU and UK feared they would, as businesses on both sides struggle to deal with the consequences that have inevitably flowed from decisions and negotiating positions taken by the British government.

Everyone on both sides has known that the first few months after Brexit would be chaotic as British and EU importers and exporters struggle to adapt to the huge disruption caused by our leaving the EU, and Covid-19 has only made that worse.

I knew what was coming and so did anyone else who can read a newspaper other than the Mail, the Express and the Sun, and now it's arrived.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

AKA "Turns out we really are fucked, after all.."

I don't know how it affects you, obviously, but while people who work in specific sectors -- fishermen, farmers, and the performing arts, for example -- are certainly in deep trouble, most people are going to suffer no more than varying degrees of temporary inconvenience as a result of Brexit.

As I think I mentioned before, I take my standard for a country being "fucked" from what I observed first-hand in Russia 30 years ago when the USSR collapsed.

We're nowhere near that yet, thank heavens.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Sid]

I guess the next step will then be that the EU customs tell you to trow your seafood in the bin or take it home again.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Furious Kent residents step up fight over Brexit lorry park

Locals condemn lack of consultation over customs clearance site for 1,200 lorries

www.theguardian.com

 

[Arkady Arkright]

I don't know how it affects you, obviously, but while people who work in specific sectors -- fishermen, farmers, and the performing arts, for example -- are certainly in deep trouble, most people are going to suffer no more than varying degrees of temporary inconvenience as a result of Brexit.

As I think I mentioned before, I take my standard for a country being "fucked" from what I observed first-hand in Russia 30 years ago when the USSR collapsed.

We're nowhere near that yet, thank heavens.

"Yet"

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Obviously I don't know what effect Covid-19 is having on freight and distribution in Germany, but over here it's been having a significant impact all aspects of daily life, including the freight industry, throughout the year, as businesses struggle to cope with working from home, staff illness, new working practices necessitated by government regulations, social distancing, and so forth. Distribution companies, in particular, have had to adapt themselves to a rapidly changing situation throughout the year because the whole pattern of their work has been disrupted, because their customers' businesses have been so greatly affected, on an ever-changing basis.

Unfortunately, that didn't change as the end of last year approached -- indeed, the epidemic worsened, as the autumn and winter drew on, exactly as it's done throughout Europe, and didn't let up because of Brexit, so I really don't see why you seem to suggest the fact people's businesses had already been disrupted for 9 months by Covid-19 by January 1st and will continue to be disrupted for much of this year, at least, has done anything but worsen the disruption caused for both the EU and the UK by Brexit.

The finer details of the deal don't really matter so much, because customs is customs is customs. The way customs works is completely unchanged or unaffected by Covid-19. It is still the same as always.

So the only important question was if the UK will still have easy access to the EU's market without much paperwork, or not. Since BoJo was always for a hard cut, it was obviously quite clear from the beginning that you will have to deal with customs the same way let's say an Australian company wants to import stuff in the EU.

The default planning strategy of all major companies was hard Brexit. Obviously some companies still hoped for the best in end, aka were badly managed, and are now painfully awake.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

The finer details of the deal don't really matter so much, because customs is customs is customs. The way customs works is completely unchanged or unaffected by Covid-19. It is still the same as always.

So the only important question was if the UK will still have easy access to the EU's market without much paperwork, or not. Since BoJo was always for a hard cut, it was obviously quite clear from the beginning that you will have to deal with customs the same way let's say an Australian company wants to import stuff in the EU.

The default planning strategy of all major companies was hard Brexit. Obviously some companies still hoped for the best in end, aka were badly managed, and are now painfully awake.

Over here, the government are saying pretty much what you are -- that it's primarily the fault of UK and EU businesses for failing adequately to prepare.

Both business and the Opposition are rejecting what they see as an attempt by the government to shift the blame for failing to provide business with the details they needed to comply with the new customs and regulatory regime after January 1st until just before Christmas, with the result that, while people knew well in advance they would need a great deal of extra documentation, they didn't know in detail what they'd need until the last minute, with the result they're struggling now.

I reject our government's analysis as a pretty feeble attempt to shift the blame for the results of their own bad policies and incompetence onto EU and UK businesses by telling importers and exporters that it's their fault, not the government's, that they're so poorly prepared for Brexit.

You seem take a different view, and agree, at least to some extent, and possibly without realising it, with people like Michael Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg that it's not their and the government's fault Brexit isn't going as well as they might have hoped, and that any problems are primarily the fault of UK and EU customers and businesses failure to make better preparations, but I think we'll just have to agree to disagree about that.

To my mind, the problem is that, while everyone knew well in advance they had to prepare themselves for Brexit, and many of them did start making preparations well in advance, they weren't given sufficient information to make all necessary preparations in detail until it was too late to complete them before January 1, because the precise information about the exact preparations they needed to make wasn't available until the last minute, and I blame our government for that.

 

[Veritable Quandry]

As I see it, they needed to extend the transition period to six months from the day the deal was signed at a minimum. Followed by a publicity and training program on the forms and requirements to do international businesses between the EU and UK on both sides. There are too many arcane technical details that were simply not available to businesses and consumers to allow them to adequately prepare in six days.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

'Absolute carnage': EU hauliers reject UK jobs over Brexit rules

Freight company director blames new requirement for EU transport firms to provide VAT and tariff guarantees

www.theguardian.com

 

[Innula Zenovka]

As I see it, they needed to extend the transition period to six months from the day the deal was signed at a minimum. Followed by a publicity and training program on the forms and requirements to do international businesses between the EU and UK on both sides. There are too many arcane technical details that were simply not available to businesses and consumers to allow them to adequately prepare in six days.

Had they done that, though, they would also have given everyone six months to see things in the deal they didn't like and play hell about it.

Quite simply, and at risk of restating the blindingly obvious, life inside the EU is better for the UK in general than life outside the EU is going to be.

I knew that and so did 48% of the people voted.

Unfortunately, 52% didn't, and will have to learn that the hard way, and being able to tell them "we told you so" isn't going to help anyone.

It's done, much as some of us in the UK tried to stop it, and can't be undone, at least not for the next ten or fifteen years at least, by which time the world will be a very different place, so we've all just got to try to make the best of it.

For what it's worth, I think HMG sees this as an opportunity to stop worrying about farming and fishing altogether -- British farmers and fishermen are good for headlines but of minimal economic importance (agriculture contributes 0.61% of GNP and fishing 0.02%).

They've been complaining for years about the EU, from whom they rely on subsidies to survive, and I don't think the government is unduly concerned about them -- if individual farmers and fishermen and trawlermen flourish, great, and if individuals fail, then tough but that's the market economy. We rely on the major supermarket chains for our food supply now, not the government and farmers.

Maybe when farming and fishing have ceased to be such an issue, and go the way of mining, the steel industry and shipbuilding, we might want to rejoin the EU and the EU might want us back, but that won't be for another 10 or 15 years, or so, and who knows what the world, the EU or the UK will look like then?

ETA: After writing that, I happened to see this -- basically the government wants to continue to subsidise farmers, at least temporarily, at EU rates, but not to produce food:

Farmers to be paid to protect the environment and improve animal welfare

New proposals will see the EU's Common Agricultural Policy replaced after Brexit with subsidy system based less on farm size.

news.sky.com

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