EU Referendum – are you in or out?

That Giles Fraser piece is properly funny; remainerisn is somehow causing our demographic time bomb !!

I’m honestly not sure if it’s a parody or not.

Also, I like pineapples. What else are we going to have to give up in this post-brexit utopia? You’re framing this in terms of “being able to live,” which is great and all, but I don’t really just want to merely survive. If the best argument you’ve got is “well, if we work really hard and invest a buttload of money in labour and technology then we probably won’t starve to death” then you might want to have a rethink. I’ve no idea how much land it would require in order to feed the entire country but it’s sure as shit going to be more than a couple of polytunnels.

I think I know who is going to do alright out of Brexit – it’s just hit me, Bear Grylls & Ray Mears, they’ll be in their element. If they can get books published (presuming we can still get ink & paper) then everyone will be down the woods, foraging for moss & termites.
I can picture the scene now – Christmas Day 2019, the whole family gathered around the table, before I serve up roast termite, with a side off moss, & a bark gravy. With a chilled leaf & hollyberry dessert.

If it can ‘clearly easily work’ you can provide us with some kind of fact based evidence; sometimes referred to as ‘proof’.

In 2008 Defra produced a report on the very matter.

“Crude calculations suggest that UK agricultural land could provide more than enough  food from arable production in terms of our daily calorific requirements, in theory making the UK self-sufficient”. (DEFRA report para 4.14).

So we could feed ourselves after a fashion, but we didn’t have to then and we won’t have to in the future. Prices might rise, they could well be shortages in the short term. But if we want to buy others will want to sell.
And I agree with Kerley, this is a cycling forum, people are just batting ideas around, we’re not a goverment department implementing policy.

And I agree with Kerley, this is a cycling forum, people are just batting ideas around, we’re not a goverment department implementing policy.

Like we could worse than the current incumbents…

Mmm, daily calorific requirements, my favourite.

Wait, I’ve got it! All we need to do is convince Huel to open a production and distribution plant here. They’d make a **** killing.

That Giles Fraser piece is properly funny; remainerisn is somehow causing our demographic time bomb !!

It’s like a bizarre religious indoctrination.

There’s some kind of irony in that we’re probably one of the least family-oriented of all the EU nations.

Calorific requirements is a great classification for food. I need about 2500 kCal a day (at rest) and would be able to fill that with things like bread, boiled turnip and water. That diet would, despite giving me those 2500 kCal, cause me to have a host of illnesses due to the lack of protein, vitamins and essential amino acids. I would also like want to kill whoever came near me as I lost my soul and started dreaming about Nutella.

The fact is, we live in a world where people have had pineapple and want it. You _cannot_ put that genie back in the bottle unless you remove it for a generation and pineapple becomes something that grandad talked about around the fire when he was drunk on turnip wine.

And anyway, here’s a million dollar question for you. If this is such a great idea and we’d be so much better off, why aren’t we doing it already?

Did I say it was a great idea? No
Did I say we would be better off? No
Did I say I think we should be doing it? No

The point was made that we couldn’t be self sufficient and I countered that point saying we could IF we wasted a lot of time, effort and money on it. We wouldn’t have pineapples and we may have a lot less choices in foods and it wouldn’t be easy but we could live.
Of course we won’t have to do it and never would (because it would be a silly idea) but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t.

Prices might rise, they could well be shortages in the short term.

Awesome. I’m amazed Leave didn’t put that on the side of a bus, that would’ve really pulled in the votes.

But if we want to buy others will want to sell.

… at a price.

I’ve just looked up the WTO tariff for pineapples from Costa Rica (the world’s biggest supplier). It’s confusing (because WTO is bloody complicate) but assuming I’m reading it right it’s 14% to Most Favoured Nation states and can be set as high as 45%.

Another way to get your calorific requirements…

Whilst i am no expert in farming, those that argue that we can ramp up food production in the UK, or cover the south west in poly-tunnels, there seems to be an obvious issue, in that who is going to provide the people power or physical labour?

Whilst some methods of farming are more reliant on machinery, many are still done using human power or labour, i live in a rural area, and as i cycled to work at 6am i would see mini-bus after mini-bus of East European lads and lasses starting work picking strawberries, asparagus and the like. These same farmers all voted Leave it seems speaking to them as they did not like the tariffs (and it is farmers who are the only people who have actually given me a solid answer as to why they dislike the EU) but are now grumbling that they are struggling to get people to work in the fields and that they have food rotting where it grows.

So prior to Brexit we are having issues getting labour, how are we going to ramp up food productions levels drastically?

The point was made that we couldn’t be self sufficient and I countered that point saying we could IF we wasted a lot of time, effort and money on it.

Ooh you little fibber.

The point you were responding to, which you quoted in the very post where you were asserting that “the UK could easily become self sufficient in food” said:

We are not as self sustainable as we were before we joined the EU.

It’s right here, see.

You then made several posts attempting to justify your claims as being fact despite being directly asked whether it was a good idea or not, before finally climbing down two pages later and claiming that’s what you’d meant all along.

So prior to Brexit we are having issues getting labour, how are we going to ramp up food productions levels drastically?

Freedom of Movement, we could just import workers from… er, oh.

It’s not just Freedom of Movement, the UK has to be a place people actually want to come to.

My wife works for the NHS, they have lost EU staff, simply because the exchange rate is so poor they can no longer afford to send money home, and the simple fact that they do not look upon the UK as a place they want to work, even if they still can.

My mate i was cycling with last night, his wife works as a lecturer at the local uni. She takes foreign medical students, and they do a year long course with her improving their english in general but also starting to learn anatomy and the like in english before going on to the big medical schools to do their med. degrees. Not only are EU applications down, they have a real downturn in Asian medical students and the like coming, at lost is that the UK is just losing its shine, and it is being made more and more difficult for them to obtain student and working visas, she is facing redundancy now.

Too obviously provocative raybanwomble. Nought out of ten.

Please answer me as to why, ethically speaking, your children are automatically allowed a state sanctioned western lifestyle – reducing the carrying capacity of the planet and increasing our carbon footprint exponentially compared to a developing worlder. But kids from developing nations are not?

What automatic right, do underachieving members of society have to a state provided unsustainable lifestyle at the expense of poorer more capable people?

Just seen a kid fighting over a sausage roll in the park with another kid looked to be 7 and 4 savage Britain ….it’s the future

I’ve just looked up the WTO tariff for pineapples from Costa Rica (the world’s biggest supplier). It’s confusing (because WTO is bloody complicate) but assuming I’m reading it right it’s 14% to Most Favoured Nation states and can be set as high as 45%.

The broad way the system works is not that complicated, you just seem to be very confused about how it works. The importing country sets a tariff schedule and registers that with the WTO, so it would be up to us to determine what level to set which may be the existing EU WTO scheduled tariff 0r a lower amount if we decide. If there are domestic producers then we would probably set the tariff at such a rate to ensure they are not massively undercut, but where there aren’t, such as bananas and pineapples the only incentive to levy a tariff is to have something to bargain with in future trade negotiations.

The broad way the system works is not that complicated, you just seem to be very confused about how it works.

So you know off the top of your head the difference between TL rates, AV rates, Bound rates and a bunch of other figures? Perhaps you could take a look at the numbers with your clearly superior intellect and tell me whether you think I’m correct or not, rather than popping in to be patronising?

I don’t need to be clever to know that you will not find the post brexit rates on the WTO website (of whatever type) because they haven’t been set yet.

Shame, you could’ve pulled me up on the very obvious mistake I’ve just realised I’ve made in working it out. Ignore all that, it’s totally wrong.

@ mefty. That would 0% on pineapples then. Don’t tell cougar he’s already stockpiled a shed full of them in anticipation of a 45% rise 😉

Whilst i am no expert in farming, those that argue that we can ramp up food production in the UK, or cover the south west in poly-tunnels, there seems to be an obvious issue, in that who is going to provide the people power or physical labour?

Silly question. It’ll be all those people who used to work for Honda or Nissan or Airbus or the EMA or JLR.

Or Bangladeshis who will work for 50p an hour and live in a shack.

Guardian saying May has been given a three month notice by ‘senior conservatives’.

Please answer me as to why, ethically speaking, your children are automatically allowed a state sanctioned western lifestyle – reducing the carrying capacity of the planet and increasing our carbon footprint exponentially compared to a developing worlder. But kids from developing nations are not?

But simply rolling our living standards back won’t really help the people in developing countries. A large amount of the money they get comes from the west as we buy their stuff. If we can’t buy their stuff then they have even less money.

The problem with the current model of development is that economic growth raises standards of living, but it also damages the environment. Our only way forward without taking us back 200 years is via technology, and if we as a technological nation regress, there’ll be less scope for that technology to be invented. We need to move forward, not backwards.

And yes, the poor of the developing world are being exploited, but the more of our money they take the more their standards will improve so we won’t be able to pay them enough. Then we’ll end up having to automate their jobs. So we’d better have clean energy by then.

Guardian saying May has been given a three month notice by ‘senior conservatives’.

That’s far too long for what we need…

Silly question. It’ll be all those people who used to work for Honda or Nissan or Airbus or the EMA or JLR.

Actually Patrick Minfird the lonely pro-brexit economist, said exactly that – we’d have to run down car making & other manufacturing , but that we’d replace those jobs with tech/design & a big increase in food processing in his WTO brexitopia.

Also I think every single supplier at work has now emailed now to say they have stockpiled as best they can, but that nothing can be guaranteed beyond Brexit Day, especially the custom made biological stuff we use in the lab. the cost of all this must be insane!

Saw on twitter one guy tried to order stock for his business from EU and was told no, with lead times too risky in case they could not fulfill order when no deal!

Guardian saying May has been given a three month notice by ‘senior conservatives’.

What do they intend to do, they screwed up the no confidence vote so she is safe. Rules are no more votes for 12months.

Well, I’ve never liked pineapples, so I’m absolutely fine with brexit.

World War 2: Food rationing? Even at the height of a major crisis with people digging up their gardens to grow food, Britain still wasn’t self-sufficeint. That was over 70 years ago when the population was much smaller. We are never going to be able to be self-sufficent in food. I seem to remember reading somewhere that it was the first half of the nineteenth century that we were last able to grow all what we ate.. Get Real

What do they intend to do, they screwed up the no confidence vote so she is safe. Rules are no more votes for 12months.

Support a VoNC in the government, she ain’t standing for another election dispatch her/resigns and fight with a new brexie/remain leader

Shit is going to hit the fan big time, I don’t think brexit punters really understood the damage it would cause to UK food supply’s and possibly a 40% tariff on basic food stuff.

To be honest it’s a mahoosive f-up.

And scary, ridiculous situation.

But we can’t call it off because people in council estate pubs in Sunderland will kick off if they aren’t allowed to be screwed over by their own hang ups and prejudices.

Or because some STW posters are so blinkered that they haven’t even appraised themselves on how tariffs work.

So how do tariffs work?

I’ve assumed that a tariff on something imported will simply increase its price by the tariff amount, but you’re suggesting that’s not how it works?

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/international-driving-permits-for-uk-drivers-from-28-march-2019

Not<span style=”font-size: 0.8rem;”> project fear anymore..</span>

The % depends on the item and the amount of it, there is a very long list on the WTO – it’s why people quoting the average get it all wrong as you need to know the quantity and % of the goods to work out the overall impact – but still they are a consumer tax. Prices will rise.

OK, so I’ve not misunderstood then. The complication is around the value of each individual tariff (and whether they even apply), and what goods they apply to. But a hypothetical 20% tariff on a “thing” will increase the price of that thing to the end consumer?

OK MSP, well when I take a group of scouts whitewater rafting this weekend on the Legacy course at Lee Valley,

Legacy and not Olympic? If the former what times since I really dont want to dodge rafts.
Dont get me wrong I love the place (even bad traffic will generally max out about 40-50mins drive for me)but in terms of useful expenditure I have my doubts.
It is a specialist hobby and not overly cheap (6 quid an hour if you have your own kit aint bad bur without it I think it would be about 30 quid). Out of everyone I know who paddles there I can only think of a couple of locals who started there. Everyone else was already a paddler and then took advantage of the place. Most of us are pretty middle class as well.
Admittedly it does seem to be a sunny evening/weekend hobby for quite a few locals to stop off and watch us for a while but in terms of sporting legacy I am not sure it really counts.

With the tariff if the goods are £10 I’m assuming it’s plus 20% tariff then plus Vat.
Can they charge Vat on a tax? Who gets the tariff? Can it be claimed back like Vat?

Can they charge Vat on a tax? Who gets the tariff? Can it be claimed back like Vat?

Yes. The Government. No.

The fundamental assumption that many Remain commentators make is that the UK will set the same external tariff schedule as the EU presently sets, which is very high on foodstuffs that the EU produces (less so on food they don’t like pineapples). There is little incentive for us to do this as it will drive up costs. What will change will be who does it make sense to buy from.

A simplistic example helps illustrate the point, say you can land Argentinian beef in the UK for £8 per unit and Irish Beef at £10 a unit, then under the current regime Irish beef is much cheaper as it suffers no tariff, but Argentinian beef is subject to 40%, which takes it price up to £11.60 per unit. Hence we buy Irish beef.

If we were to set the tariff at 25% post Brexit then Argentinian beef would be £10 per unit and Irish Beef would be £12.50 so we would buy from Argentina instead of Ireland – this is one of the reasons the Irish are very concerned. Our own producers would be faced with the same level of external price competition, it would just come from different people.

The people who have big issues are UK farmers exporting to the EU, sheep farmers having the biggest proportion of exports, their goods will be subject to the very high EU external tariffs.