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Volkonski
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#751

Post by Volkonski »

The wreckage of Brexit is all around us. How long can our politicians indulge in denial?
If both parties ignore the uncomfortable facts, politics will be flooded with dangerous conspiracies and betrayal myths.


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... 72579846-1
This year will mark the 50th anniversary of a musical masterpiece that continues to speak illuminating truths about the impossibility of the human condition, and how people from these islands tend to cope with it. Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon was released in March 1973, as the last traces of postwar optimism gave way to mounting economic strife and international tension. The response it offered was twofold: a call to empathy and mutual understanding, and the pointing-out of a national trait that this writer – among many others – has probably quoted far too much. It comes nearly six minutes into a song simply called Time: “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.”

As a new political year begins, those nine words seem more apposite than ever, and they snugly fit one defining fact of our national predicament: that the wreckage of Brexit is all around us but our politicians will still not acknowledge it. The evidence now encompasses reduced trade, diminished investment and the fact that the UK has been the only major economy not to have returned to its pre-pandemic size. Brexit has resulted in a hit to tax revenues estimated at an annual £40bn – enough to have prevented 75% of the spending cuts and tax rises that were announced in November.

Meanwhile, amid impossible passport queues and howls of pain from businesses now tied up in red tape, stories that symbolise the folly of our exit from the EU seem to arrive at least one a week. Just before Christmas, for instance, it was reported that the Metropolitan police would now be buying armoured ministerial cars from the German manufacturer Audi because no UK firm was “able to meet the requirements of the tender”. Here was more proof of the supply-chain problems that are afflicting British producers, and a malaise that has caused annual UK car production to fall by more than half since 2016.

The government responds to such news with its usual ludicrous evasions: “I don’t deny there are costs to a decision like Brexit,” said Jeremy Hunt in November, “but there are also opportunities, and you have to see it in the round.” Meanwhile, even now, Tory zealots cling to the belief that life outside the EU could still deliver all the promised prosperity and general magic, if only ministers would try harder.

A good example: led by Jacob Rees-Mogg (who is apparently giving serious thought to being the next Tory leader), MPs are pressing Rishi Sunak to stick to a deadline of 31 December 2023 for “reviewing or revoking” EU laws that still apply to the UK, and imagining that the resulting legislative pyre will produce some kind of economic phoenix. The truth, as ever, is more prosaic. The task will involve hundreds of Whitehall civil servants forensically assessing nearly 2,500 pieces of retained EU legislation, and the CBI says the plan is likely to produce “a further drag on growth”.
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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#752

Post by RTH10260 »

Brexit exodus helps drive record number in EU banks paid €1m-plus
Data shows UK banks losing well-paid staff, as Italy, France and Spain make up 70% of rise in EU top earners

Rupert Neate Wealth correspondent
Thu 19 Jan 2023 12.41 GMT

A record 1,957 bankers across Europe earned more than €1m (£878,000) last year, according to data that shows the scale at which some of the best-paid jobs in Britain have moved from London to the EU since Brexit.

The European Banking Authority disclosed on Thursday that the number of bankers earning €1m or more a year had increased by more than 40%, from 1,383 in 2020 to 1,957 in 2021. Excluding UK figures, it is the highest number of €1m-plus European bankers since the EBA began collecting the data in 2010.

The figures no longer include the UK, which left the EU after Brexit in 2020. Before it was excluded from the data, the UK had consistently led the bankers’ pay rankings. In 2017, 3,567 UK-based bankers collected more than €1m.

The EBA said the increase in the number of €1m-plus European bankers had been caused by booming investment banking profits as well as “further relocations from staff after Brexit from the UK to the EU and also as overall salary levels increased”.

The regulator said 70% of the increase in high earners was in banks operating in Italy, France and Spain.

The single highest paid banker earned €14m-15m in Spain. The EBA did not identity the person, but said that “a significant amount of variable remuneration corresponds to one severance payment”. Their pay works out at least 466 times the average salary in Spain.

Three more bankers – one each from Germany, Spain and France – were paid €13m-14m.




https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... id-1m-plus
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#753

Post by RTH10260 »

Business minister boasted Britishvolt was Brexit success story months before collapse
Electric car battery firm planned to build large facility in Northumberland with government funds if it found investors

Michael Savage Policy Editor
Sun 22 Jan 2023 07.30 GMT

Ministers were using the electric car battery maker Britishvolt as a prime example of the government’s record for “securing business investment in the UK” just months before the scheme collapsed without any public investment.

The company, once heralded as Britain’s potential champion for battery making, fell into administration last week after the failure of last-ditch talks to find emergency funding to keep it afloat. Its demise has been criticised as showing the government’s lack of industrial strategy, the shortcomings of “levelling up” and Britain’s failure to grasp new manufacturing opportunities in the wake of Brexit.

However, it has emerged that just last summer, ministers were still using Britishvolt as an example of the government’s ability to attract investment to the UK. In response to a request from a Tory MP for details of the government’s progress in securing investment, the then-business minister, Jane Hunt, claimed the government “has provided further support to attract significant investment in manufacturing, including delivering Britishvolt’s £1.7bn gigafactory in Blyth Valley, which will support 3,000 direct jobs and a further 5,000 across the supply chain.”

Senior Britishvolt executives are now to be quizzed as part of a parliamentary inquiry into the electric car battery industry. It had been trying to build a large facility near Blyth in Northumberland and had been promised government funds worth £100m, but the grant was dependent on finding private investors for the project.

Government officials met with the company on several occasions, but both the business department and the Treasury concluded its financial and managerial performance meant providing emergency support would not be a good use of public money. There have since been claims of mismanagement and profligate spending by the company, which senior figures have denied.

It is an embarrassment for the government, in a week in which it was attempting to show its commitment to supporting neglected areas with its levelling up funding. The Britishvolt collapse means there is now only one large-scale gigafactory planned in the UK, which will be Chinese-owned.



https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... e-collapse
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#754

Post by Foggy »

The Britishvolt collapse means there is now only one large-scale gigafactory planned in the UK, which will be Chinese-owned.
:?
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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#755

Post by Uninformed »

Foggy wrote: Sun Jan 22, 2023 12:35 pm
The Britishvolt collapse means there is now only one large-scale gigafactory planned in the UK, which will be Chinese-owned.
:?
There’s not a lot of UK industry left if you discount all the foreign owned or majority foreign owned companies. Expecting the closing down sale soon.
If you can't lie to yourself, who can you lie to?
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#756

Post by Volkonski »

This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England-
NOW FOR SALE (Scotland and Wales not included)
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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#757

Post by Volkonski »

The Brexit Lies that Literally Made Us All Poorer

https://bylinetimes.com/2023/01/17/the- ... ll-poorer/
Perhaps the richest claim came from one of the richest MPs. In July 2017, Jacob Rees-Mogg declared that Brexit would reduce clothes, food and wine costs by 20%. Did it? For people completing the weekly big shop, or parents on budgets buying clothes that their children have outgrown, the answer is clearly ‘no’.

In July of that year, Aldi’s ‘back to school’ uniform set cost £3.75. In July 2022, it was priced at £5. An increase of 33%. Even taking into account inflation, the set should be worth £4.25, so that is still an increase of 17%.

:snippity:

The average domestic energy bill in 2017 was just over £1,200. Today it is £2,300. It’s true to say that Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine have caused energy costs to sky-rocket – although UK energy prices are now reportedly higher than in comparable economies like France and Italy. The fact remains, however, that the then future Prime Minister promised a brighter future, and if he had the confidence to prophesy, he should be held to account for it.

:snippity:

A 2017 meal of soup and salad from Aldershot would cost you £8.35. Today it’s £12.45. The soup with bread rose some 63% from £2.30 to £3.75. And the Mediterranean salad with a drink increased some 44% from £6.05 to £8.70. Inflation would have increased the prices to just £2.82 and £7.42 respectively.

:snippity:

The Express reported in November 2015 of an economist claiming that quitting the EU would cause the cost of living to fall by 8%. Professor Patrick Minford, a free marketeer beloved by Liz Truss, wrote that post-Brexit Britain “would receive a welfare gain of 4% of GDP, with consumer prices falling 8%”. This is bunkum, but Minford still keeps his professorship, no matter how wrong he was.

The deeper concern of all these lies is just how much they have gone unexamined by the newspapers that printed them. There has been no soul-searching; no awareness that they could have given mistruths the oxygen of publicity. No mea culpa that an entire nation was gaslit into voting for something that has been shown – repeatedly – to have caused immense economic harm to so many in this country. Truth and trust in the media has become an invariable victim on Brexit’s barricades. And its close cousin – accountability – has followed soon after.
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.” ― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
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#758

Post by RTH10260 »

UK will be 15 years late in hitting £1tn annual export target, figures show
Exclusive: Forecasts predict exports will fall to £707bn next year and target will not be reached until 2035

Kiran Stacey
Sun 22 Jan 2023 20.13 GMT

Ministers have been accused of leaving a “record of failure and broken promises” as internal forecasts show Britain will be 15 years late in achieving its £1tn annual export target after being hit by Brexit.

Projections from the Department for International Trade (DIT) show the value of UK exports will not reach £1tn until 2035, based on current trends, with the total due to fall to £707bn next year.

The deferral underlines how difficult British ministers have found it to meet the lofty predictions Brexiters made about international trade after leaving the EU.

The pledge was first made by David Cameron in 2012, with the initial goal to hit the £1tn mark in 2020. But Boris Johnson later gave an end date of 2030 upon reviving the promise in 2021 as the centrepiece of a campaign called “Made in the UK, sold to the world”.

However, new figures show Britain will not achieve £1tn until 2035. They emerged in a parliamentary answer by Andrew Bowie, the minister in charge of UK exports.

The estimates are based on forecasts from the independent Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR), which show exports falling from £739bn last year to £707bn next year, before rising again to £725bn by 2027.

Bowie said in his statement: “Extrapolations of the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast suggest £1tn exports could be achieved by around 2035 without additional intervention.”



https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... gures-show
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#759

Post by Maybenaut »

Volkonski wrote: Sun Jan 22, 2023 1:21 pm This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England-
NOW FOR SALE (Scotland and Wales not included)
Everything old is new again…

This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.
"Hey! We left this England place because it was bogus, and if we don't get some cool rules ourselves, pronto, we'll just be bogus too!" -- Thomas Jefferson
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#760

Post by RTH10260 »

Taking back sovereignity and control
More than 140,000 EU citizens in UK may have wrongly received benefits
Independent Monitoring Authority concerned by Home Office error and impact it could have on those affected

Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent
Sat 28 Jan 2023 07.00 GMT

More than 140,000 EU citizens in the UK may have received benefits they were not entitled to due to a Home Office error, it has emerged.

The Independent Monitoring Authority (IMA), the statutory body charged with protecting EU citizens’ rights post Brexit, has expressed concern that the situation arose and the impact it could have on those affected.

It said it was made aware of the issue last week and has now written to the Home Office to “seek clarity on what steps have already been taken to remedy it and what further steps will be taken”.

The government could decide to demand millions of pounds in refunds from EU citizens or may opt not to pursue those who have wrongly received benefits and are no longer living in the country.

The error came to light after the Home Office conducted an exercise to update UK Visa and Immigration (UKVI)’s register of individuals who have been refused settled or pre-settled status in the post-Brexit EU settlement scheme (EUSS).

Records of those who had decisions pending were given a “certificate of application” to allow them to enjoy rights, guaranteed by the EU-UK withdrawal agreement, while their case was being investigated. These rights included access to benefits.

As a result of the exercise, the Home Office discovered as many as 141,000 had continued to show a certificate of application status rather than “refused” status, the IMA said. This meant they still had access to benefits although they had been denied the right to stay in the UK.

“The Home Office has confirmed that this only affects individuals who received a refusal decision between 27 June 2021 and 19 April 2022. Anyone who has been granted pre-settled or settled status is unaffected, and they do not need to take any action,” the organisation added.

It is also “seeking assurance that the EUSS digital system is fit for purpose, maintained and audited to reflect accurate digital statuses, and accurately available on demand for all eligible citizens”.




https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... d-benefits
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#761

Post by RTH10260 »

from back in November:
Home Office is putting 2.6m EU citizens at risk of removal, court hears

Lisa O'Carroll Brexit correspondent
Tue 1 Nov 2022 16.45 GMT

The government is putting 2.6 million EU citizens at risk of detention or removal from the country by the Home Office, the high court has heard.

The claim was made at a judicial review of the Home Office’s implementation of the part of the withdrawal agreement guaranteeing the rights of about 6 million EU citizens living in the country before Brexit.

Mr Justice Lane was told that the Home Office’s rules contain a “fundamental feature” which threatens the right of a person to live, work, retire or get access to healthcare.

The case is being brought by the Independent Monitoring Authority, a statutory body set up to protect the rights of EU citizens settled in the country before Brexit.

“The effect of the secretary of state’s scheme is that that person will automatically lose their rights to reside in the UK, making them an illegal overstayer who is liable to detention or removal,” Robert Palmer KC, for the IMA, told the court in his opening argument.

He said the result of the loss of their rights is that they will be “exposed to considerable serious consequences affecting their right to live, work and access social security support and housing in the UK”.

The “fundamental feature” only affects those citizens who were in the UK for fewer than five years and who were granted temporary residency status, known as pre-settled status.

Under the government’s rules, those with this status are obliged to reapply for permanent, or settled, status once their pre-settled status expires at the end of five years.

About 5.8 million EU citizens were granted status to remain settled in the UK, but 2.6 million were granted “pre-settled status” because they had been in the country for fewer than five years.

Any of those 2.6 million who fail to apply for what Palmer called the “upgrade” will automatically be stripped of their employment, social and residency rights under the present rules, the court was told. This is because they then fall under the scope of regular immigration laws.

Palmer told Lane this was “straightforwardly incompatible with the withdrawal agreement, which does not permit the loss of rights to residency to EU citizens in these circumstances”.

The IMA contends that under the law, EU citizens’ rights “do not expire” unless they are lost or withdrawn for reasons laid out in article 15 (3) of the withdrawal agreement.




https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ourt-hears
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#762

Post by RTH10260 »

Brexit is a ‘complete disaster’ and ‘total lies’, says Tory business boss
Private equity veteran Guy Hands says Boris Johnson ‘threw the country and the NHS under the bus’

Julia Kollewe
Tue 31 Jan 2023 09.55 GMT

Guy Hands, a leading City figure, has called Brexit a “complete disaster” and a “bunch of total lies” that has harmed large parts of the economy.

Speaking on the third anniversary of the UK’s departure from the EU, Hands, the founder, chair and chief investment officer of the private equity firm Terra Firma, said: “It’s been a complete disaster. The reality is it’s been a lose-lose situation for us and Europe. Europe has lost more [in financial services] but we’ve lost as well. And the reality of Brexit was, it was just was a bunch of complete and total lies.

“The only way that the Brexit put forward by Boris Johnson was going to work was if there was a complete deregulation of the UK and we moved to a sort of Liz Truss utopia of a Singapore state and that was just never going to happen,” Hands, a former donor to the Conservative party, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“The British population was never going to accept a state in which the NHS would be demolished, where free education would be severely limited, where regulation with regard to employment would be thrown apart. It was just complete and total absolute lies.”

He added: “The biggest issue about it, and you can take the Brexit bus as a good example, is the lies that Boris Johnson and the Conservative party told about the NHS. In fact what they did was throw the country and the NHS under the bus.”




https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... eu-economy
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#763

Post by RTH10260 »

Revealed: secret cross-party summit held to confront failings of Brexit
Leading Brexiters and remainers, including Michael Gove and David Lammy, met for two-day ‘private discussion’ with diplomats and business leaders

Toby Helm, Observer Political Editor
Sat 11 Feb 2023 17.30 GMT

An extraordinary cross-party summit bringing together leading leavers and remainers – including Michael Gove and senior members of Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet – has been held in high secrecy to address the failings of Brexit and how to remedy them in the national interest, the Observer can reveal.

The two-day gathering of some of the country’s most senior Labour and Tory politicians from both sides of the Brexit debate, together with diplomats, defence experts and the heads of some of the biggest businesses and banks, was held at the historic Ditchley Park retreat in Oxfordshire on Thursday afternoon and evening, and on Friday.

Documents from the meeting, obtained by the Observer, describe it as a “private discussion” under the title: “How can we make Brexit work better with our neighbours in Europe?”



https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -of-brexit
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#764

Post by RTH10260 »

NISSAN ISSUES WARNING OVER FUTURE OF SUNDERLAND CAR PLANT
Concerning comments for UK manufacturing sector

Published 07 February 2023
By David Mullen

The future of the UK’s largest car plant could be in doubt unless the government takes steps to reduce energy costs and stimulate the rebuilding of the country’s shattered automotive supply chain, Nissan executives have warned.

Speaking at the launch of the revised Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance yesterday (February 6), a number of Nissan board members suggested that unless the Sunderland plant received government support, plans to build the next-generation Nissan Qashqai and Juke models there could be scrapped.

Despite Sunderland remaining “an important and core plant” for now, Nissan’s global chief executive, Makoto Uchida said that the UK was becoming a more challenging environment in which to build cars and the company “need[ed] a supplier base”.

Nissan’s chief operating officer, Ashwani Gupta, elaborated further on the challenges facing the plant.

In order to ensure the factory’s future, he said, the plant would need government support to make it more attractive as a future investment destination for Nissan.

He added that manufacturing costs must fall amid high energy prices that are already making Sunderland a more expensive location in which to build cars than factories in continental Europe.

The third major issue facing Sunderland, said Gupta, was the lack of a strong local supply chain, inflating the cost of shipping components.

Asked whether Sunderland could regain its competitiveness as a car plant in which it is worth investing in the future, Gupta said: “That is a question that has to be answered.”




https://www.driving.co.uk/news/business ... car-plant/
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#765

Post by Reality Check »

Just another article about economic failure in the UK without a single utterance of Brexit.
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#766

Post by RTH10260 »

vlog by a "remoaner"

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#767

Post by RTH10260 »

Rishi Sunak travels to Belfast in sign NI protocol deal is imminent
Visit suggests announcement of UK-EU solution on Northern Ireland could come as early as Friday

Lisa O'Carroll, Aubrey Allegretti and Jessica Elgot
Thu 16 Feb 2023 22.41 GMT

Rishi Sunak arrived in Belfast on Thursday night, in a sign that a deal on the Northern Ireland protocol is imminent.

The foreign secretary, James Cleverly, will also travel to Brussels on Friday for talks with the European Commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič.

The movements suggest that an announcement of a negotiated solution between the UK and EU could come as early as Friday. Sunak is being accompanied by the Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, Downing Street said. Security is already in place at a central Belfast hotel.

A No 10 spokesperson said: “Whilst talks with the EU are ongoing, ministers continue to engage with relevant stakeholders to ensure any solution fixes the practical problems on the ground, meets our overarching objectives and safeguards Northern Ireland’s place in the UK’s internal market.

“The prime minister and secretary of state for Northern Ireland are travelling to Northern Ireland this evening to speak to political parties as part of this engagement process.”

EU Diplomats have reportedly been summoned to a briefing on Friday, with speculation that a draft deal is about to be shared and road tested both in Belfast and Brussels.

A UK government spokesperson confirmed Cleverly’s meetings in Brussels but played down the prospect of a deal being unveiled on Friday.

“This is part of their ongoing engagement and constructive dialogue with the EU to find practical solutions that work for the people of Northern Ireland,” they said.

A deal would conclude four months of negotiations to end a row that has caused fissures in the Tory party for the past three years and led to the suspension of power-sharing in Belfast.



https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... l-imminent
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#768

Post by RTH10260 »

The UK is just endangering their own inbound supply chain :blackeye:
Channel migrants: Truck drivers protest over rise in fines

Published 19 January

Fines for lorry drivers caught at the Channel ports with illegal immigrants hiding in their vehicles are being increased fivefold from 13 February.

Hauliers will be fined £10,000 per stowaway, up from £2,000.

The government said it was targeting "negligence rather than criminality", and wanted drivers to ensure vehicles were adequately secured.

The owner of a haulage company in Hythe, Kent, said there was little more he could ask his drivers to do.

Lorenzo Zaccheo, owner and managing director of Alcaline Transport, said most attempts to board happen when lorries are queued on the A26 in France on the way to Calais port.

"The only way they can get into our vehicles now is through the roof," he said, "and for health and safety reasons we can't allow our drivers to climb over four metres to check when it's dark.

"Even if you've got a fridge trailer, they've got cordless angle grinders so they can cut through the roof.

"We're suffering a massive amount of damage on a yearly basis, about £100,000."

'Unjust system'

Rod McKenzie from the Road Haulage Association said the increased fines were "desperately unfair on the vast majority of lorry drivers, just doing their job".

"There may be a tiny minority who are prepared to take backhanders from criminal gangs, and we'd support the government cracking down on them," he said.

"But this is an unjust fine system where you're hitting everyone."

A Home Office spokesperson said: "This is the first overhaul of the Clandestine Entrant Civil Penalty Scheme in 20 years and demonstrates the government's ongoing commitment to cracking down on illegal migration.

"Far too many vehicles are currently not adequately secured. These measures are another tool in securing our border, deterring illegal migration and disrupting the business model of people smugglers."





https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-kent-64333034
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#769

Post by RTH10260 »

UK risks ‘disastrous’ food scandal due to lax post-Brexit border controls – NFU chief
Minette Batters accuses ministers of ‘dereliction of duty’ in failing to ensure safety of agricultural imports

Fiona Harvey Environment editor
Fri 17 Feb 2023 14.29 GMT

Britain is in danger of a “disastrous” food scandal, owing to lax post-Brexit border controls on agricultural imports, the leader of the UK’s biggest farming organisation has warned.

Minette Batters, the president of the National Farmers’ Union, accused ministers of a “dereliction of duty” in failing to ensure food and other agricultural imports were safe. She said the government had failed to learn the lessons of the horsemeat scandal of 2013.

“We are seeing little to no checks on imports that are coming in from the EU,” she said. “We have the massive risk of African swine fever in Europe, and to not be investing in our defences for keeping our biosecurity and animal and plant health safe, I think is just a dereliction of duty.”

After the horsemeat scandal, in which products such as burgers and lasagne purporting to contain 100% beef were found to show traces of horsemeat, stricter controls were put in place on many food systems.

But Batters said those controls were being eroded, with “so little checks” on imports, and pointed to recent findings that many lorries entering the UK contained fraudulent meat. “If there was a food scare from Europe, it would be very difficult to trace it right now,” she said.

“Many in [food] retail, processing and manufacturing would say that on the back of ‘horsegate’ we developed the safest, most secure food supply chain in the world. There was massive investment in safety and security and short supply chains,” she said.

“I think there’s a real risk 10 years on that we forget those lessons of the past, and there’s nothing that will bring this country to a standstill quicker than a food scare. That would be disastrous, and we want to do everything possible to avoid that. But unless the checks are put in place, and if we can’t trace everything, then of course we are at threat.”

The threat could grow much worse under trade deals with non-EU nations, she added. The vast majority of food imports are still from the EU, where controls on food are similar to those in the UK. But under trade deals with Australia and New Zealand that will soon come into force, and under potential future deals with countries such as India and Latin America, food could soon be arriving from regions with very different rules and standards.




https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... te-batters
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Post by RTH10260 »

re the mentioned horsemeat scandal

That happen exactly a decade ago. EU regulations on meat processing have been changed in the aftermath of stretching (or completely replacing) beef by horsemeat. Imports to the UK from the EU will continue to be safe. Of course the UK relying now on third (world) countries for imports is a different matter.
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Post by Volkonski »

Horsemeat is not inherently inferior to beef. Just as long as it is properly raised and processed.

I recall my father telling me about eating horsemeat steaks in Hawaii during WW II on his way to Iwo Jima. At least he thought it was horsemeat. ;) He liked it. As he told me "you didn't ask questions, it was a steak".:thumbsup:

Back in my grocery store days much of the canned dog food we sold was horsemeat and clearly labelled as such. Some of the dog food then contained whale meat, also clearly labelled.
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Brexit: What can we expect from an NI Protocol deal?

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-64685125
The set of post-Brexit trading rules for Northern Ireland has split political opinion since its inception in 2021.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been to Belfast to brief Stormont politicians on what the solution might look like.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) - among the protocol's most vocal critics - says progress has been made and describes this as a "big moment" in the path towards a deal.

:snippity:

Products that are staying in Northern Ireland will go through a green lane, undergoing fewer checks and less paperwork than those headed for the Republic of Ireland.

The EU had their own terminology for this - an "express lane".

Whatever the label a key question will be to what extent those controls are eased or even eliminated.

For Northern Ireland businesses a bigger issue than physical checks has been increased paperwork, such as customs declarations, so for them a true green lane would have to mean minimal bureaucracy.

A major step to this agreement overall was when the two sides signed off on a UK-designed trade data sharing system.
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Post by Azastan »

The United States still exports slaughter horses to Mexico.

Canada used to be a slaughter destination for horses as well, but Canada clamped down on the import of US horses destined for slaughter for various reasons (use of illegal antibiotics, use of bute, etc.). US horses bound for slaughter in Canada have to go through a six month 'cleaning out' period in the US before they can be brought into Canada.

Horses in the UK and in EU countries have passports. These passports record all drugs given to an animal in its lifetime. Any administration of certain drugs will forever remove that animal from the meat pipeline.

Now almost US slaughter bound horses go to Mexico. Mexico doesn't care what drugs are in an animal. Mexico doesn't care if an animal is sick or diseased.
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The politics sketch
Rish! delays his Irish border fudge after Brexiter meltdown

John Crace
Mon 20 Feb 2023 19.53 GMT

Brexit plays havoc with people’s memories. There are those of us who could have sworn that most leavers promised the country that a deal to exit the EU would be the easiest thing in the world. It would be the most amicable separation in history. The EU would be as pleased to see us go as we would be to see the back of them. We Brits would get everything of which we had always dreamed. Or maybe not. It now turns out that nobody ever said anything like that. It was all a figment of our imaginations.

Even so. This Monday was meant to be the day. The day when the final piece of the Northern Ireland Brexit jigsaw fell into place. Rishi Sunak had had a cunning plan. There could be a green lane for goods coming from Great Britain whose final destination was Northern Ireland.

A red lane for goods bound for the republic. And a fudge to arbitrate on any disputes. A panel made up of UK and EU officials that we could pretend had nothing to do with EU law. Even though it obviously did. What else did people expect? The EU wasn’t about to become British any time soon.

It was all so ridiculously simple that Rish! couldn’t quite understand why no one had thought of it before. What’s more, he had phoned Ursula von der Leyen and the EU Brexit negotiator Maroš Šefčovič and they had also given it the thumbs up. They too had got fed up with the endless negotiations that went nowhere, and were ready to cut a deal. At the very least, they told themselves, the UK now seemed to be taking some kind of responsibility for sorting out the mess into which it had got itself. A brief glimmer of synaptic contact in Westminster.

Or maybe not. The mere hint that a deal was in the offing was enough to send all the Brexiters into a meltdown. Even those who had never been demanding that the UK leave the single market and the customs union in the first place. The whole point of their existence was to say no to everything. Even if they were presented with a deal that offered them everything they had always wanted, they would still find a way to say no. To do otherwise would be to show weakness. Besides, it was all probably a plot to lure them in. The first rule of the DUP is that if the EU is willing to agree to something then it must be a trap.




and it goes on at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ers-say-no
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ohh the cliff hanger ...
Rishi's Brexit deal in chaos: Sunak holds crisis talks with Cabinet and pleads with Tory MPs as ministers 'threaten to quit' if he agrees Northern Ireland terms without DUP sign-off
Rishi Sunak is under pressure to square off any NI Brexit overhaul with the DUP

By JAMES TAPSFIELD, POLITICAL EDITOR FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 09:30 GMT, 21 February 2023 | UPDATED: 11:33 GMT, 21 February 2023

Rishi Sunak's push for a new Brexit deal on Northern Ireland looks to be in chaos today with ministers threatening to quit if he makes too many concessions.

The government and EU have been in intensive discussion about how to overhaul the protocol, with signs over the weekend they were on the verge of an agreement.

However, the prospect has been thrown into doubt as the PM desperately tries to convince the DUP and his own party that Northern Ireland's place in the UK can be protected.

Mr Sunak is gathering his Cabinet this morning amid warnings that ministers could walk out. He spent several hours yesterday trying to reassure Eurosceptic MPs, who are insisting that the DUP must approve any new terms.

Boris Johnson is among the senior figures urging the premier to push ahead with legislation - currently stalled in the Lords - that would allow the UK unilaterally to scrap key parts of the protocol.

Meanwhile, Jacob Rees-Mogg has compared Mr Sunak's approach to Theresa May's, saying there is no chance of restoring powersharing at Stormont without the DUP.

Hopes of a breakthrough this week appear to be fading, with no appetite for announcements close to the anniversary of the outbreak Ukraine war on Friday.





https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... gling.html
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