Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Brexit discussion thread XIII (Please read OP before posting)
Options
Comments
-
Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 67,823 Mod ✭✭✭✭
Join Date:Posts: 64798
Brussels Sprout wrote: »that account appears to be suspended right now
think its @vivamjm; or at least there is an account of that name that is tweeting about that topic0 -
Janey Mack wrote: »I know mods don’t like Twitter dumps but I am lost for words here. A textbook example of Doublethink from the UK press.
The Express is in a league of its own. It's basically the NewsMax/OANN of British tabloids. I believe their readership is primarily pensioners. Their brains must be absolutely pickled from reading that rubbish every day.0 -
Janey Mack wrote: »I know mods don’t like Twitter dumps but I am lost for words here. A textbook example of Doublethink from the UK press.
https://twitter.com/itsafrogslife/status/1346492076956004353?s=20
I feel sorry for the people of the UK. They are at sea, rudderless, with a dishonest government (aided by the press) who have offered no plan or vision to navigate them out of this storm.
I think you are being polite. This whole double think has caused massive problems for the UK through the whole process. The UK government has constantly forgotten sovereignty goes both ways. There has been this expectation that every other country would just roll over to UK demands. There will be plenty more examples of this to come.0 -
It seems we could be quite badly hit by the total lack of preparedness in some of the supply chains that haven't really comprehended what is happening.
Rules of origin are seeing EU products entering the UK from the EU, being processed in UK in someway (e.g. even being perhaps labelled or packaged etc) as horizontal exports. It seems UK (and some Irish) supply chain nodes have failed to comprehend this and are only now beginning to understand it.
How in the hell did people not know this? I mean it's been blatantly obvious this was the case for several years at this stage.
I can understand that normal members of the public may not understand this stuff, but if you're a food distribution company or food processor on any kind of scale, surely it's somewhat core to your business to understand how tariffs work if a large part of it is dealing with imports and exports of goods which you process and reexport. You don't just take your advice from the Daily Express or the Tories saying "oh it's all just project fear. Nothing to worry about!" do you?!
From the FT:
Pan-EU food supply chains hit by Brexit trade deal
Industry concerned that goods imported into UK from bloc and then re-exported to member states face high tariffs
https://www.ft.com/content/c068fc5f-dfe4-4890-8153-a59e1833c100
If this is accurate, you'd have to ask what the hell Irish state bodies have been doing for the last few years?
Did they fail to communicate this properly with food supply chain?? I am hoping that there are not going to be significant issues here over the days ahead.
It certainly fell on deaf ears on the British side of those chains - quite a few deer caught in headlight issues going on e.g. at M&S which has barren shelves in Ireland and in France.
Absolutely none of this stuff should have been pushed ahead with in the backdrop of the pandemic. It should have been paused for a year or so. I think doing that is unforgivable and I 100% blame the Tories. We've now got disruption due to a new customs regime layered on top of already hugely problematic issues around COVID disruption.
I am really beginning to regret not having emigrated to NZ a few years ago - on so many levels! It's just incompetence layered on arrogance layered on more incompetence - most of which is emanating from London and beyond our control, but there's been far, far too much "aargh sure it'll be grand!" here too.0 -
There's been very little "sure it'll be grand" in Ireland when it comes to Brexit.0
-
Advertisement
-
Disputes over Rockall are fairly normal, Brexit is just one more fly in the ointment
The British went to war over a rock in the atlantic ocean not so long ago, would they do it twice? (not expecting fireworks, but they're guarding it with their navy so anything's possible I suppose)
The Scottish govt, under devolution, are protecting fisheries using Marine Protection Vessels - nothing to do with the Royal Navy0 -
correct horse battery staple wrote: »Communicate what exactly? as little as a month ago no one knew which way brexit would go
The irish government for years has communicated to businesses (as a business owner quite alot of communication actually!) to prepare for no deal brexit, we got something not as hard but still bad, seeing how exports and imports to UK in last 5 years more than halved then businesses have been adapting as much as possible.
in UK daily there are stories of businesses still not knowing what brexit means to them
Communicate case scenarios, this should have been done at minimum!!
If X then you do this
If Y then you do this
Etc
Just because nobody knew if they’d be a deal or not is no excuse for not having plans!0 -
HalfAndHalf wrote: »Communicate case scenarios, this should have been done at minimum!!
If X then you do this
If Y then you do this
Etc
Just because nobody knew if they’d be a deal or not is no excuse for not having plans!
If we had gotten Y instead of X you'd know the newspapers would be full of reports of small businesses suffering because they wasted so much preparing for X unnecessarily.0 -
BlitzKrieg wrote: »If we had gotten Y instead of X you'd know the newspapers would be full of reports of small businesses suffering because they wasted so much preparing for X unnecessarily.
And? At least business would have all the information they needed.
The papers will always print a negative tilt for any scenario, that’s their job nowadays!0 -
correct horse battery staple wrote: »Communicate what exactly? as little as a month ago no one knew which way brexit would go
The irish government for years has communicated to businesses (as a business owner quite alot of communication actually!) to prepare for no deal brexit, we got something not as hard but still bad, seeing how exports and imports to UK in last 5 years more than halved then businesses have been adapting as much as possible.
in UK daily there are stories of businesses still not knowing what brexit means to them
It seems that the supply chains passing through the U.K. haven’t adapted at all. I’m already seeing significant disruption.
I’d like to know what communication was directed from both the Irish government and the European Commission towards those.
Eg: why am I getting issues with major logistics operators?!
There are only a handful of them and they can’t be that unprepared.
I’m having arguments with continental shippers this morning who were insisting that Cork is in the U.K.?!!!! and telling me that due to “your Brexit problems with VAT” I can’t ship.
I just really think I should have emigrated. I’m absolutely fed up to the back teeth. Between covid and this I can’t even sleep anymore.
How the hell has 2020/2021 gone this badly wrong?
What if we end up with food shortages or something due to all of this? The supply chains are already dodgy due to COVID disruption and that may get worse with the way things are going and this is just being piled on on top of it.
Brexit should have been suspended until 2022 on the basis of COVID. The sheer incompetence of the current UK government and willingness to throw everyone else's business or interest in stability (including their own citizens') under the bus is just beyond comprehension and all for what exactly?0 -
Advertisement
-
AutoTuning wrote: »I’d like to know what communication was directed from both the Irish government and the European Commission towards those.
Eg: why am I getting issues with major logistics operators?!
There are only a handful of them and they can’t be that unprepared.
I’m having arguments with continental shippers this morning who were insisting that Cork is in the U.K.?!!!! and telling me that due to “your Brexit problems with VAT” I can’t ship.
No amount of government communication can overcome sheer ground-level stupidity. This is akin to my son's seat-neighbour on a flight to Dublin - young French lad, really excited to be going on his first trip to Ireland, told my son that he wasn't sure whether or not his French bank card would be accepted in Ireland, but he was looking forward to spending his "foreign" notes. Turned out his provincial bank told him that Ireland uses GBP as its currency ... :rolleyes:0 -
AutoTuning wrote: »If this is accurate, you'd have to ask what the hell Irish state bodies have been doing for the last few years?
Did they fail to communicate this properly with food supply chain?? I am hoping that there are not going to be significant issues here over the days ahead.
(In fairness) I think the govt. has been communicating on it over last few years (e.g. telling companies to review their supply chains for UK exposure) but I'm presuming right up to the evil day which dawned on 1/1/21 it's been much cheaper and easier for businesses to stay with status quo and hope some political deus ex machina will sort it out. Doing the necessary work to prepare is quite costly too.but there's been far, far too much "aargh sure it'll be grand!" here too.
Yeah have always thought that (esp. given I was expecting "no deal" during December). Seems to be "our" grasshopper type nature (going down the dodgy route of national stereotypes). A philosophy that gets caught out when a shock to the existing system (Brexit, Covid 19) happens.0 -
It is indeed -my bad- and many thanks for your sleuthing L1011.think its @vivamjm; or at least there is an account of that name that is tweeting about that topic
This is fundamental planning, whether business, risk, contingency, etc.HalfAndHalf wrote:If X then you do this
If Y then you do this
etc
With Brexit, ever since June 2016, the baseline was always "if no deal then you do this" then ever less worse variations up to and including "no Brexit". The variations could then be culled over time according to where the UK staggered. For instance, "no Brexit" could be culled with enough certainty (-for business planning purposes) once the UK served the Article 50 notice at end March 2017 (because there was no legal comeback from it at the time, so Brexit was always going to happen from that moment forward).
In very many domains, "then you do this" could also be clearly, objectively and pragmatically mapped out per variation, by simply reading and understanding existing EU (and transposed national-) legislation relevant and applicable to the domain, prior to June 2016. It is very much this 'mapping', presented as eventual consequences of Brexit, that was dubbed project fear.
So in that respect, if you can cast your mind back to 2015-2016, that scenario-presenting was actually done to some non-trivial extent. It's just that too much of the British electorate dismissed it.
It is under this mapping that we now live in Luxembourg instead of Nottinghamshire and that, for the last 6 days, I have remained a 'european' trademark and design attorney, when none of my UK-based current and ex-colleagues and competitors have.
With the forum search function, you can find my scenario-presenting of the issue, 4+ years before it (inevitably) happened. Yet our UK group started its contingency measures seriously only 3 or 4 months ago, and they're in a barely-functional (but post-WA -compliant) shape right now.0 -
fly_agaric wrote: »
Yeah have always thought that (esp. given I was expecting "no deal" during December). Seems to be "our" grasshopper type nature (going down the dodgy route of national stereotypes). A philosophy that gets caught out when a shock to the existing system (Brexit, Covid 19) happens.
The COVID thing has been a really serious wake up call to me about how passive this place is. Every step of this crisis has been handled by reacting to it after it happens, even when it was blatantly obvious there were huge risks opening up. They were grand at the bumping up the testing bit, but when it came to trace and isolate that was a bit unpleasant and complicated, so was ignored. We shouldn't be at this case level, but here we are. We didn't test at airports until it was far, far far too late. We wouldn't deal with UK-Irish traffic. Wouldn't even block US tourists at the early stages of it.
Anyway, without going way off topic. It's just left me with the impression the state isn't competent. The fact that the UK has been even less competent or that the US is off its rocker does not excuse our lack of forward planning around practical issues.
The impression I have from Irish retail (and even more so the UK chains like M&S) is that Brexit would somehow magically smooth over and there would be a nice easy solution to it in the end and if they just burry their heads in the sand, it will somehow all be fine in the new year when some kind of sense is restored and everyone's back to normal. That hasn't happened.
The impression I get is that a lot of people in Ireland while being quite sure of their position politically at a practical level still drank in the "oh it's no problem! Minor little adjustment to passport colours and not much else" line from British TV news channels and so on.0 -
AutoTuning wrote: »The COVID thing has been a really serious wake up call to me about how passive this place is. Every step of this crisis has been handled by reacting to it after it happens, even when it was blatantly obvious there were huge risks opening up. They were grand at the bumping up the testing bit, but when it came to trace and isolate that was a bit unpleasant and complicated, so was ignored. We shouldn't be at this case level, but here we are. We didn't test at airports until it was far, far far too late. We wouldn't deal with UK-Irish traffic. Wouldn't even block US tourists at the early stages of it.
Anyway, without going way off topic. It's just left me with the impression the state isn't competent. The fact that the UK has been even less competent or that the US is off its rocker does not excuse our lack of forward planning around practical issues.
The impression I have from Irish retail (and even more so the UK chains like M&S) is that Brexit would somehow magically smooth over and there would be a nice easy solution to it in the end and if they just burry their heads in the sand, it will somehow all be fine in the new year when some kind of sense is restored and everyone's back to normal. That hasn't happened.
The impression I get is that a lot of people in Ireland while being quite sure of their position politically at a practical level still drank in the "oh it's no problem! Minor little adjustment to passport colours and not much else" line from British TV news channels and so on.
On the (off topic) Covid 19 response, would agree.
However the entire West has failed that test quite badly to one degree or another so I cannot be too harsh on our lot. It is much more of a curve ball + a shock to the system than Brexit. In hindsight as well as preparing for the worst rather than hoping for the best it required very unpopular, illiberal + economically damaging policies (less damaging than endless lockdowns though...) and an authoritarian response (enforced rules, not "recommendations") to cope better.
On Brexit, government + the civil service & state agencies have communicated alot over last few years but if businesses are being caught out maybe should have done a bit more to force things (i.e. pressure and incentivise [if possible?] companies to make changes to mitigate risks even if it was advantageous in the short term to hope for the best). That goes against the grain of Irish people again of course.
edit: again on Covid, though the media eye has long since moved on and we have enough of our own cases again that travel introductions are a drop in the bucket I think US tourists can still fill the honour system form & go away on holliers without restricting movements (if they can find anything to do right now!).0 -
AutoTuning wrote: »The COVID thing has been a really serious wake up call to me about how passive this place is. Every step of this crisis has been handled by reacting to it after it happens, even when it was blatantly obvious there were huge risks opening up. They were grand at the bumping up the testing bit, but when it came to trace and isolate that was a bit unpleasant and complicated, so was ignored. We shouldn't be at this case level, but here we are. We didn't test at airports until it was far, far far too late. We wouldn't deal with UK-Irish traffic. Wouldn't even block US tourists at the early stages of it.
Anyway, without going way off topic. It's just left me with the impression the state isn't competent. The fact that the UK has been even less competent or that the US is off its rocker does not excuse our lack of forward planning around practical issues.
The impression I have from Irish retail (and even more so the UK chains like M&S) is that Brexit would somehow magically smooth over and there would be a nice easy solution to it in the end and if they just burry their heads in the sand, it will somehow all be fine in the new year when some kind of sense is restored and everyone's back to normal. That hasn't happened.
The impression I get is that a lot of people in Ireland while being quite sure of their position politically at a practical level still drank in the "oh it's no problem! Minor little adjustment to passport colours and not much else" line from British TV news channels and so on.
The level of disruption to all parties caused by brexit isn't going to magically smooth over overnight.There is obviously going to be a period of adjustment which is inevitable.
The assertion that closer cooperation with continental countries by Ireland is interesting but I can't see Irish people changing their lifestyle to a more mainland European style .The Irish way of life is very similar to the UK imo.0 -
The level of disruption to all parties caused by brexit isn't going to magically smooth over overnight.There is obviously going to be a period of adjustment which is inevitable.
The assertion that closer cooperation with continental countries by Ireland is interesting but I can't see Irish people changing their lifestyle to a more mainland European style .The Irish way of life is very similar to the UK imo.
I'm not sure it's as much a lifestyle change as a brandname change in some cases.
Also which European lifestyle?
France or Italy can be quite different particularly around aspects of food culture, but the Netherlands for example or Belgium really aren't in most aspects.
I've lived in several other EU countries and the lifestyle isn't really what's at issue here. It's the flow of basic and quite boring goods like biscuits and cakes and stuff, but more so things like fresh fruit and veg.
Unless lifestyle is defined by Mcvities and Lloyd Grossman pasta sauce and you can't possibly just switch to another brand of very similar products, I don't really see the challenge.
A huge % of those products are also multinational brands. The challenge is that Ireland has historically been supplied with them through UK distribution chains and they may be packaged or filled in Britain. In some cases it's a matter of swapping to the Benelux aspect of the supply chain or whatever. It's not that big a deal to do and should have been done as a precaution, but seemingly wasn't as inertia was easier.
In many cases you're also talking about food products that are made on the continent and repackaged in the UK with local labelling which is turning it into a horizontal export from our point of view as that's processing.
What's worrying me isn't the brands on the shelves it's the sailing into a shortage of goods due to not having changed them already.
I mean, we've a very similar lifestyle to say New Zealand or Australia in terms of consumerism, as does the UK, but it has relatively few of the same brands and products on the shelves. That doesn't mean they're alien cultures.
A huge % of the "British" products on our shelves aren't British. For example take a look at any of your household products, while they may have a localised label for the UK and Ireland, they're frequently made in France, NL, Germany etc. With food products it's more likely you'll get UK stuff, particularly for processed foods / prepared foods, if they're not Irish.
The issue here is not whether you get French cornflakes instead of British cornflakes. It's whether you get cornflakes at all. It's about disrupted supply chains of fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs) which deplete very quickly when that happens.0 -
The assertion that closer cooperation with continental countries by Ireland is interesting but I can't see Irish people changing their lifestyle to a more mainland European style .The Irish way of life is very similar to the UK imo.
Why do we have to change our lifestyles for closer co-operation with our European neighbours?
Also, I think some people need to calm the hysteria down a bit and learn a bit of stoicism. Having sleepless nights over something you can't control is not going to do you, or your mental health, any good.0 -
The rules of origin issues (especially for prepared food which Ireland gets from UK) were obvious the second the UK confirmed it would not remain in the customs Union.correct horse battery staple wrote: »Communicate what exactly? as little as a month ago no one knew which way brexit would go
The irish government for years has communicated to businesses (as a business owner quite alot of communication actually!) to prepare for no deal brexit, we got something not as hard but still bad, seeing how exports and imports to UK in last 5 years more than halved then businesses have been adapting as much as possible.
in UK daily there are stories of businesses still not knowing what brexit means to them
Hence such items were always going to be treated as if "no deal" applied.0 -
There is arguably a bit of a perfect haulage storm that formed during December, between the global container shortage, scalping freighters, uncertainty over ISPM15 pallets etc (much of which long discussed and announced by specialists the likes of @vivamjm, btw, but with zero MSM visibility).Isn't that from the fresh lockdown restrictions though?
But where perishables are concerned, not for goods vehicles inbound to the UK, any more than they were at the onset of the last lockdown restrictions.
The bare supermarket shelves in the UK, likewise Sainsbury's NI bulk-purchasing foodstuffs alternatives from SPAR, are the coal mine canary about the 48,500 trained customs officers still missing in the UK: EU27 hauliers noticed, saw the drone pics of Manston, risk-assessed, and unsurprisingly wrote the UK off until the procedural-operational Brexit dust settles a bit more.
They're better off with a truck earning its keep at break-even under increased competition on EU27 deliveries/groupage, than having it eating €s sat on Manston tarmac or the M20 for days on end.
The resulting diet enforced upon UK residents this January could be painted as a Brexit benefit, I suppose.0 -
Advertisement
-
I did a shop in Aldi yesterday, the only thing I normally get that they didn't have was humus. From pictures posted M&S stores in Ireland looks like they're cleaned out. Aldi, Lidl and many other retailers prepared for disruption because they chose to.
It's more likely that M&S and Sainsbury's/Asda in northern Ireland will either get new EU suppliers or exit entirely.0 -
M&S stores in Paris have been out of sandwiches since the New Year, expressly blaming Brexit for the absence of deliveries. Not sure if the story has hit the British MSM, but it's been all over the Brexit Twittersphere since Monday.I did a shop in Aldi yesterday, the only thing I normally get that they didn't have was humus. From pictures posted M&S stores in Ireland looks like they're cleaned out. Aldi, Lidl and many other retailers prepared for disruption because they chose to.
It's more likely that M&S and Sainsbury's/Asda in northern Ireland will either get new EU suppliers or exit entirely.0 -
Plus both Aldi and Lidl have had operations outside the EU for years so are well used to customs and tariff paperwork and have no doubt prepared their British stores for disruption.M&S stores in Paris have been out of sandwiches since the New Year, expressly blaming Brexit for the absence of deliveries. Not sure if the story has hit the British MSM, but it's been all over the Brexit Twittersphere since Monday.0 -
M&S are British-centric, they source feic all from within whatever country they're operating in outside of England. One of their signs they're displaying is apologising for the lack of products due to 'unforeseen circumstances', can you believe that nonsense.0
-
M&S are British-centric, they source feic all from within whatever country they're operating in outside of England. One of their signs they're displaying is apologising for the lack of products due to 'unforeseen circumstances', can you believe that nonsense.
Outrage at initial disruption caused by brexit is unrealistic imo.A fair number of stores here in England have some empty spaces on the shelves,whether that's brexit or covid (or a combination of both)is anyone's guess.
Regarding M&S,it is disappointing if they only source products from the UK,I know from experience that's not the case with Tesco for example who do source local Irish produce in their stores which is common sense you'd think.0 -
Musgraves - Super Valu etc. have been sourcing from outside the UK for a long time now. You see lots of continental brands on the shelves of the stores they supply.I did a shop in Aldi yesterday, the only thing I normally get that they didn't have was humus. From pictures posted M&S stores in Ireland looks like they're cleaned out. Aldi, Lidl and many other retailers prepared for disruption because they chose to.
It's more likely that M&S and Sainsbury's/Asda in northern Ireland will either get new EU suppliers or exit entirely.0 -
prawnsambo wrote: »Musgraves - Super Valu etc. have been sourcing from outside the UK for a long time now. You see lots of continental brands on the shelves of the stores they supply.
Long may it continue, have discovered some fantastic brands shopping in Lidl and Aldi, far superior to the traditional ones here. And have been able to get brands I enjoyed on the various periods I worked aboard,0 -
And now with GB producers facing new obstacles and costs to selling to the EU Irish producers have another advantage in exports particular to Britain and Ireland.prawnsambo wrote: »Musgraves - Super Valu etc. have been sourcing from outside the UK for a long time now. You see lots of continental brands on the shelves of the stores they supply.0 -
M&S stores in Paris have been out of sandwiches since the New Year, expressly blaming Brexit for the absence of deliveries. Not sure if the story has hit the British MSM, but it's been all over the Brexit Twittersphere since Monday.
M&S launches in France every few years, miscalculates the market (realising French people find it a novelty for a week then discover it’s mostly stuff they don’t eat or wear) and leaves again. It’s been a recurring theme since the 1990s. They even recently opened and closed a store on the Champs Élysées only to close it again relatively soon after. I don’t know why a frumpy middle of the road British retailer thought it was going to do as a clothing retailer on that street ?! Also it’s astronomically expensive to get space there.
They also did a big launch in Brussels, taking a very swish store next to Apple in the Brussels counterpart to Grafton St - opened in 2015 and closed again in 2017.
Their adventures into the USA were also rather short lived.
Overall M&S just seems to make a lot of miscalculations.
I think a combination of Brexit & COVID could be the end of a whole load of staples of the British high street tbh.
Up north I wouldn’t be surprised if Sainsbury’s just sells the stores to Dunnes or Tesco or something. It’s unlikely they’ll be viable as a micro chain.
The other option is Sainsbury’s expand south and setup a serious retail network Ireland wide.
Asda are owned by Walmart, so not exactly lacking in resources.0 -
Advertisement
-
AutoTuning wrote: »M&S launches in France every few years, miscalculates the market (realising French people find it a novelty for a week then discover it’s mostly stuff they don’t eat or wear) and leaves again. It’s been a recurring theme since the 1990s. They even recently opened and closed a store on the Champs Élysées only to close it again relatively soon after. I don’t know why a frumpy middle of the road British retailer thought it was going to do as a clothing retailer on that street ?! Also it’s astronomically expensive to get space there.
They also did a big launch in Brussels, taking a very swish store next to Apple in the Brussels counterpart to Grafton St - opened in 2015 and closed again in 2017.
Their adventures into the USA were also rather short lived.
Overall M&S just seems to make a lot of miscalculations.
I think a combination of Brexit & COVID could be the end of a whole load of staples of the British high street tbh.
Up north I wouldn’t be surprised if Sainsbury’s just sells the stores to Dunnes or Tesco or something. It’s unlikely they’ll be viable as a micro chain.
Never mind France they have been on the verge of moving to Limerick for about 30 years now and it keeps going t**s up.
I imagine their only hope on mainland Europe would be in the big UK holiday areas0
This discussion has been closed.
Advertisement