You couldn’t make it up part 94!

British businesses that export to the continent are being encouraged by government trade advisers to set up separate companies inside the EU in order to get around extra charges, paperwork and taxes resulting from Brexit, the Observer can reveal.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/23/brexit-hit-firms-advised-government-officials-set-up-shop-in-eu

Too angry about this particular bit of bait and switch to say anything useful…

.@Jim_Cornelius This needs to be set next to the many claims by Leavers that Brexit would mean the opposite. There must be many more examples of such lies … pic.twitter.com/QgTA6LR4ND

— Chris Kendall (@ottocrat) January 23, 2021

Mate of mine works on equipment used to treat cancer patients. Necessary spare parts stuck in the Netherlands I’m told. Been necessary for a week. Normally arrived next day. Oh well. They’re only cancer patients I suppose. Sovereignty.

It’s kicking off on a FB forum linked to a UK cycle clothing company, as EU based expat customers have suddenly discovered it’s not as easy as it was….

Are these the same bananas?
Border Force officers seize almost a tonne of cocaine worth £76m hidden among bananas.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/cocaine-bananas-southampton-border-force-b1791419.html

The ones from South America do not fall foul of our lies and deceits as regards African states, no.

The bananas are from Ghana – we could have just rolled over the EU / Ghana deal but tried to force more out of them so no deal has been reached From what I remember from what I read

You couldn’t make it up part 94!

British businesses that export to the continent are being encouraged by government trade advisers to set up separate companies inside the EU in order to get around extra charges, paperwork and taxes resulting from Brexit, the Observer can reveal.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/23/brexit-hit-firms-advised-government-officials-set-up-shop-in-eu

Andrew the owner of Horizon that’s featured in that article is an acquaintance of mine. The Tories haven’t been the party of business for a while, at least brexit should shatter any remaining illusions.

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/24/bill-for-boris-johnson-brexit-is-coming-punishingly-steep

I’m sure the sunlit uplands must be just over the next hill. The unicorns will pull us up there if we believe a bit harder.

From that ‘punishingly steep’ article linked earlier:

He too has decided to set up a new company in the Netherlands, for the same reasons. “When the government said it had secured free trade it was obvious it was nothing of the sort,” says Betts.

VAT problems, new charges on moving goods and more bureaucracy all added up to an “administrative nightmare” which left him with no choice. The only way to avoid the Brexit barriers was to operate inside them, to move back into the single market. “If you don’t, you are screwed in so many ways,” he says.

Betts also talked to trade advisers from the Department for International Trade, who gave the same advice as they gave to Moss. “The adviser I spoke to said it was a can of worms, and he thought that would be the best move,” says Betts.

Who would’ve thought it, eh? There were real and tangible benefits from remaining in the single market!

Now British jobs will go to the EU (and the companies will be less competitive due to additional bureaucracy and costs).

Maybe EU countries will set up similar companies in the UK, but the gain for them is (obviously) less.

For instance, can’t see the likes of the German bike companies replicating warehouse and distribution for cycle parts so either it’s gets more expensive and takes longer/less choice or they give up on the UK as too much hassle…

The only way to avoid the Brexit barriers was to operate inside them, to move back into the single market.

I’ve got an idea. Rather than thousands of small companies all moving things to the EU, setting up satellite offices etc, what if we brought all the functionality of the single market to the UK by becoming part of this union?

It’s a winner all round. Be like a union of European businesses and interests, all working together. Could call it the European Union.

I’ll take my idea to the Daily Mail immediately.

I’ll take my idea to the Daily Mail immediately.

Nah, it would never be acceptable to the 51% of the population who believe in the advanced economic theory sprouted by the DM.

My company opened an office in Dublin a couple of years ago in anticipation of all this. Over the summer the London office was closed (120 jobs) and the Dublin office is now the head office. Obviously I can’t go and work there now without a visa. Nor can I work for other companies like Patagonia – EU applicants only. Cheers Brexiters! Let’s not forget Brandon Lewis’s boast that Northern Ireland now enjoys the competitive advantage of being in the EU and the UK.

I think you can work in Dublin without a visa, it’s one of the reasons to relocate HQs to there rather than other EU centres.

EDIT: your company might want staff with EU passports though, of course.

I’m sure the sunlit uplands must be just over the next hill. The unicorns will pull us up there if we believe a bit harder.

Are the unicorns being led by the grown-ups?

The Tories haven’t been the party of business for a while

They are the party of rapacious disaster capitalists and tax avoiders. They now represent the interests of those people exclusively. I’m just amazed that there are still people who still won’t accept that glaringly obvious fact.

A mate’s wife works for the Department for International Trade and has confirmed that the advice they are giving exporters are to relocate their businesses to the EU

Just have a think about that for a minute. The British government is telling UK businesses to relocate their business out of the country, with the loss of jobs and tax revenue that that entails.

A good article by Andrew Rawnsley on the madness of it all

The bill for Boris Johnson’s Brexit is coming in and it’s punishingly steep

There you have it. The utter insanity of Brexit in a nutshell

@tjagain – it has now made its way to the BBC news site but it will quickly drop off and be forgotten.

This should be front page news of all newspapers, it infuriates me that no-one is skinned for it.

The Brexit promoting MPs should be booted out for the damage they have inflicted on this country.

It is tragic that so many people swallowed the bullshit and didn’t research what might happen if we left the EU.

Been thinking about this (i know) and if you stand back a bit from the EU trade deal and analyse some of the stuff that went wrong got forgotten about etc a lot of it is cultural limitations and what it means to the Tories…

Music Gigs etc not a big thing in the middle class shires.

Fishing a useful soundbite but its not fly fishing is it.

Proper SMEs no cash in them

Northern Ireland no need to expand on that

Makes you think

An example of what happens when amateurs come up against professionals.
One side is fully resourced with people who understand the subject, have prepared thoroughly from the start, can fully assess the implications of any decision – and wrote the rule book.
The other side have very limited expertise, have failed to prepare (= preparing to fail), are unable to accurately assess the implications of any decision, have a misplaced innate belief in their perceived superiority/intelligence/capability.
When will johnson and his hapless stooges openly recognise they have delivered a huge shit sandwich to the UK? It’s brexit-free, UK shit – but it’s still shit.
Yes, that’s wishful thinking on my part.

It is tragic that so many people swallowed the bullshit and didn’t research what might happen if we left the EU.

It didn’t really take research, it just required putting yourself in the EU leaders’ shoes and thinking “what would I do?”. I spent much of my time reading the original Brexit thread knowing what I would do and treading carefully on STW. The STW Brexiters were incapable of seeing it from the other side:

Edukator
Free Member

“Bespoke deal”. You’ll get the dregs you’re given.

The UK has made it clear that the plan is to indulge in fiscal and social dumping to be more competitive. I hope the 27 will negotiate a deal on my behalf that negates that.
Posted 3 years ago
teamhurtmore
Free Member

No they havent – but dont let that stop you making things up. That was merely posed as one outcome if sensible negotiations failed. They wont. people are not THAT stupid.
Posted 3 years ago

It turned out people negotiating on behalf of the UK were THAT stupid. And Michel Barnier tied them up in knots.

Whatever happened to THM – I’d be interested in his views…

In related news – former Brexit MEP dies in accident at his home in the Bahamas https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-55788542

It would be amusing to hear Jamby’s views too. He was right about no tarifs on cras (I agreed with him). But apart from that I can’t think of many things he was right about. Those “grown ups” behind the scenes were just figments of his imagination, it was all left to the babies trhowing their toys out of the pram.

Sadly they’re probably both laughing all the way to the bank with shiney new EU passports in their pockets.

what it means to the Tories…

Aye. People dribble on about echo chambers, but we are ruled by one.

I will confess that during my 4 minute walk to the polling station in June 2016 I became intensely irritated at Cameron’s arrogance and a bunch of other things. I am vaguely Euro-sceptic and saw upsides in a friendly very soft Brexit that formalised our current non-Euro (currency) status and e.g. gave room to modernise farm subsidies.. but I did plan to vote remain. Then at the booth I thought **** it and voted leave. I did not envisage the current situation or even Cameron mincing off when he lost the bet. Sorry. People said they’ll never forgive leave-voters, that’s ok. For any STWer who knows me in real life I hope we can stay friends. The end.

Twowheels – thanks for posting that. But I’d like to dig into something a bit more:

I did not envisage the current situation

The unfolding situation was predicted by the remain campaign, you didn’t have to envisage it. Presumably some part of your brain dismissed it as part of the general news/politics noise? Which is understandable because there was a lot of noise and there were just as many people telling us it was going to be brilliant. Just goes to show that we all hear what we want to hear. I’m sure part of the reason I believed the remain campaign was because I’m pro-EU at a conceptual level. I do however know of someone who is anti-EU but voted remain on pragmatic terms because he understood the implications.

The other side have very limited expertise

If you mean the UK, or even just the UK civil service… we had plenty of expertise, it was just dismissed, sidelined and neutered.

People said they’ll never forgive leave-voters, that’s ok.

Not me. I have family and friends that voted Leave, and I’ve never held their 2016 decision against them… not the day after the vote, not when the leading politicians in both main parties ruled out a compromise that could maintain many of our freedoms and keep trade flowing, not when those urging caution and compromise were branded as undemocratic unpatriotic enemies of the people, not when pulling out of schemes like Erasmus+ went from unlikely to inevitable… I still blame the self seeking liars of the campaigns, those in the media that failed to expose them, and those that even now, when the outcomes are becoming clearer and clearer to all, ask us to accept their lies as truth… often giving as a reason for doing so that so many of the public feel put upon when the lies are pointed out to them.

AD : In related news – former Brexit MEP dies in accident at his home in the Bahamas

Yeah I read that earlier…zero **** given.

thought **** it and voted leave

, “**** em”, “I ****in hate Poles”, “We’ll be all ****in right” and “We’re one of the 7 – 8 richest countries in the world, they need us” pretty well sums up the words of 80% of the Brexiteers I know.

As for the response to “Hold on a minute, this is the biggest thing the UK has voted on in 50 years, remember the 70’s, there is huge uncertainty, risks we don’t understand, we get it wrong and our kids future ….”
I totally understood the intensity of the dislike of Osborne et al, zero hours contracts, the upset with perceived Brussels bureaucracy, profligacy, etc.. but at that point in time the referendum was the weapon they had, so they used it.

I have no interest either in or saying ‘warned you so’ to the Brexiteers now wringing their hands and whining “I didn’t realise”, “It’s not what they promised us”, because it gets us nowhere.

It’s happened, it’s early days, so it is grist to the mill and all we can do is make the best of it as I doubt the EU will have the UK back in my lifetime, for sure with the deal we gave up.

As for the Scot who voted Brexit to get independence, he’s looking odds on to get it within 10 years.

@twowheels – don’t be so hard on yourself. At least you have admitted your decision may have been the wrong one in hindsight, something an awful lot of Leave voters refuse to do.

The unfolding situation was predicted by the remain campaign, you didn’t have to envisage it. Presumably some part of your brain dismissed it as part of the general news/politics noise?

We have to remember what it was like back during the campaigning before the vote. Boris and Farage were absolutely hogging the mainstream media with their bus, 3-word slogans and keeping things very simple. The Remain camp had very little chance of getting the nuances across to huge swathes of the electorate when bombarded with this noise. You had to really go looking for the details behind the Remain arguments as every time it was tried to be explained on the news or a daytime TV show it was never given enough time or depth to sink in. Plus the whole ‘Project Fear’ defence was, while utter bollocks, very effective. I’ve mentioned on here before that I had doubts in the days before the vote as pretty much everyone I worked with was a vehement Leave voter and I was worrying that I was the one in the wrong. It was only reminding myself of the fact that all of the trail centres, major road projects, lots of enterprise zones and investment in refurbishing town centres here in Wales was majorly supported by the EU Redevelopment Funds and there was no way I trusted the people in Westminster to match or exceed that funding.

If you had no real interest in politics or the nuances of business back then, which most people don’t, then it was very easy to not hear the Remain argument and be swept along in the Leave campaign’s momentum.

If you mean the UK, or even just the UK civil service… we had plenty of expertise, it was just dismissed, sidelined and neutered.

In negotiating trade deals? No, the UK didn’t have the required expertise.
Since joining the EU on Jan 1 1973 the UK have benefitted from trade deals negotiated by the EU; any expertise the UK had at that date has long disappeared.
There was no perceived need for the UK to retain any skilled trade negotiators as deals were done on a team basis; since the 2016 referendum there should have been an acute awareness that the UK did not have the requisite experience and there was an urgent and immediate need to address that huge skills gap.
It was ignored with all too predictable consequences.

I was thinking in particular of Ivan Rogers.

Ivan Rogers?
A lone voice in the wilderness attempting to explain to those who either couldn’t understand or didn’t want to.

In related news – former Brexit MEP dies in accident at his home in the Bahamas

54, crumbs that young; poor family.

Not a lone voice, plenty of people at the FCO were giving similar advice, with the experience and knowledge to know just how the EU works, how they do deals, and the decisions the UK needed to make (but avoided) before attempting a deal. I know someone who was a permanent representative before he came back to London to help after the vote. Don’t forget we don’t get to hear what active civil servants are staying to ministers at all… only what a few retired civil servants say after they have moved on… most say little publicly, even then.

54, crumbs that young; poor family.

I’ll save my grief for a mate (ardent remainer btw) who mortgaged his house two years ago on the promise of getting a free trade deal/single market inclusion so he bought a small fishing/prawn boat, 85% of his catch used to end up in restaurants in Spain within 24 hrs of being landed, not any more thanks to **** like that.

I just don’t/will not suffer utter elitists who offshore their wealth from UK taxes yet campaigned/voted for Brexit whilst lying to the somewhat ignorant and trusting populace of this country with no recourse whilst promising milk & honey for all once our sovereignty is free from the shackles of EU oppression.

Thing is there were three chances to vote remain. One referendum (which wasn’t binding) and two general elections (which were binding). The Lib-Dems and SNP were the obvious remain vote and look how they scored. Scotland is firmly remain but in the rest of the UK people had so little concern for staying in Europe they voted for two different views of Brexit “get brexit done even if it’s a shit deal” and “Lexit respect the vote” (epitomised by Dazh).

The people who voted leave and 2 x Tory are no longer in my address book.

Those who voted remain and 2 x Lib Dem or SNP I congratulate.

The other combinations aren’t quite as committed to Europe as they might themselves think. Fortunately I haven’t met anyone who voted Tory and out in three years.

No need to take it out on repentants such as twowheels or others who have expressed regret. However when one of Farage’s faithful die in their tax haven… .

I’m still waiting, in vain, for the grown ups to appear and say ‘right you had a go but you’re not good at this so here’s what we’re going to do’. Telegraph blaming Merkel for Brexit now…….

Why are they “blaming” anyone for something they espoused and welcomed? If it’s down to her, why aren’t they “thanking” her?

Why are they “blaming” anyone for something they espoused and welcomed? If it’s down to her, why aren’t they “thanking” her?

Because we’re now at the final line of the Brexit saga:

Brexit will be fantastic, there are no downsides only considerable upsides
Brexit will be pretty good
Brexit will be OK
Brexit will not be worse than being in the EU
Brexit will be worse in the short term but a sacrifice worth making for the long term gains
Brexit will be worse but we knew that
Brexit is a disaster but you voted for it
Brexit is someone else’s fault

There is of course the potential to add many more lines to the ongoing ****, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Major step changes in Nation States are rarley driven by facts or practicalities see War, Revolution, Dictators,

There is a reason why most successful businesses are run by a board and a management team…..