Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

CelticRambler

Janey, there's a lot of rubbish being spouted on this thread recently! It's entirely possible to buy and use non-standard sized bottles for the sale of wine. Ask any of the specialist vin jaune producers in the Jura. They sell their wine in 620ml bottles - so a pint and a bit. Chances are the majority of you have never even heard of it, let alone bought or tasted it, so there's no reason to think that the Brits couldn't make a commercial success out of their Brexit pint. Or at least it's not the sourcing and filling of the bottles that'll be the limiting factor.

If putting 568ml into a 620ml wine bottle is too much of a technical challenge - or too heretical an idea to be getting such bottles from the same country as they got their blue passports - then I can order 1-pint bottles right now from an American supplier. Of course they're American pints, so hold only 473ml - but did the Minister for Brexitness specify that these new pints of wine have to be British pints?

Brussels Sprout

I knew that US gallons were different to British gallons but didn't realise that was also the case for pints.

Bad enough that the units aren't metric but add this sort of confusion and it's just baffling that anyone would want to use it.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121570370#Comment_121570370

Not only are US pints & gallons different, but not all ounces are the same.

Normal ounces are Avoirdupoids, (28+ grams) but gold is measured in Troy ounces (31+ grams). Then of course you have carats used to weigh diamond and the purity of gold.

Leroy42

It is being said because nobody thinks it can't be done, or even that it won't be done. But that it was A) always possible and B) even if it wasn't possible it is hardly worth shouting about.

Of course, there will be plenty of people that will buy British wine in pint bottles to prove to themselves that Brexit was indeed worth it.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121570370#Comment_121570370

These sell out Brexiters doesn't go far enough. For me it's a 1/4 pottle of wine or nothing.

But seriously having to work over there listening to people try to sell me pins, firkins and kilderkins of beer made me feel like I was talking to a bunch of blackadder characters. Especially when you are dealing with the CAMRA and The Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood.

Podge_irl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121570035#Comment_121570035

Of course it is possible.

But absolutely nobody outside Britain is going to do it to cater to the British market and there is no reason to think that anyone in Britain has been experiencing a latent demand for it either. That there are specific regions producing unusual sized bottles for local produce for historic reasons is utterly irrelevant. You need people to shift to a standard that there is no reason to, or demand for.

MustangMick

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121570035#Comment_121570035

568ml in a 620 ml bottle would be approx 8.4% underfill.

Vast majority of Wine/Spirits bottles have their capacity marked on the base

Mick

Sam Russell

Changing from750 ml of wine to 568 ml is another example of shrinkflation or the ongoing rip-off for consumer.

It was a disaster for Toblerone going from 400 grams to 360 grams in the same box by removing a few peaks and spreading the rest out in the hope no-one would notice. (Other chocolate bars also used the same trick). Of course, the price remained unchanged.

It is all part of the ongoing inflation greed being visited on the consumer.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121571808#Comment_121571808

They are not changing from one to the other. No one is banning 750 and no one is actually going to produce 568 so no it's nothing like chocolate bars.

L1011

Guaranteed that someone will knock out some Sussex sparkling - the one they always bitch about not being allowed call Champagne - in pint bottles this coming summer; and that'll probably be the end of it.

yagan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121571850#Comment_121571850

Paired with a bucket of Vindaloo.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121571867#Comment_121571867

Forgot there was football on this summer. I presume the lyrics will have to be changed to reflect post-Brexit situations.

"me and me mum and me dad and me gran, we were off to Waterloo until we were turned away at the border as we'd already spent our 90 days in nan's holiday house in Nerja"

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121571808#Comment_121571808

And now they can't even use the Swiss mountain imagery anymore cos the chocolate will be made in Bulgaria IIRC, swiss laws preventing the use of alpine climbs. How the mighty have fallen.

Seth Brundle

Mod: right folks, let's get back to this being a serious discussion, thanks

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121570370#Comment_121570370

That's the point; nobody does want to use it. All this fuss about sparkling British wine in pint bottles is just a dead cat to distract us from this fact.

Older boardies will recall that back in the dear, dead days beyond recall — between February and August in 2022, to be precise — Jacob Rees-Mogg was the UK's Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency. In September 2022, with her unerring eye for talent, Prime Minister Liz Truss promoted him to Cabinet as Secretary of State for Business and we are all vividly aware of his glittering career since them.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Back when he was but a simple Minister of State, one of the wisest and most far-seeing of his many wise, far-seeing initiatives was to launch a public consultation on the reintroduction of imperial measurements. It's true that a few narrow-minded people criticised the consultation as obviously biased; it had questions like "“If you had a choice, would you want to purchase items: i) in imperial units ii) in imperial units alongside a metric equivalent?” People weren't asked if they wanted the choice of purchasing items in metric units, with or without an imperial equivalent.

But, damn the begrudgers! The consultation went ahead anyway. Doubtless because Sir Jacob had moved on to higher things, actually processing and publishing the results of the consultation took an extraordinarily long time; the result was not announced until 27 December 2023. Even more extraordinarily, it seems that the public were not in accord with the Will of the People as discerned by Sir Jacob; 81% of those who responded to the consultation wanted to keep the status quo, and a further 18% wanted a complete shift to metric units. Only 1.4% wanted either more use of imperial measurements (0.9%) or the exclusive use of imperial measurements (0.4%). So, with a heavy heart, the government announced that it would not be making any change to the weights and measures legislation.

Except for one tiny, tiny change — the one we are now discussing. It's a micro-change. Sure, you'd hardly even notice it going down. And no pretence is made that it's a response to any view expressed in the consultation; it doesn't seem that anybody actually asked for this.

So why is this change being made? So we'd all talk about it, is the answer, instead of talking about the response to the consultation, which the government very much doesn't want people talking about, because it's one more data point that shows how out-of-touch Brexiteers are with British society, British opinion and the British people.

peter kern

https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releases.msg-id-99580.html

Swiss industrial tariffs abolished

in a way related to brexit as uk still does not really control its borders for good so i wonder if that is actually beneficial to then as switzerland seems to say it will likely have a positive impact on the economy and reduce consumer prices.

also there was a lot of dogmatic people , that said the eu would not extent the battery rule of origien rule, but it did . it does seem to make a lot of sense in this case https://ireland.representation.ec.europa.eu/news-and-events/news/commission-proposes-one-extension-current-rules-origin-electric-vehicles-and-batteries-under-trade-2023-12-06_en

does that mean we will get less docmatic about import tariffs and go more on case by case way or would this cause more issues.

Peregrinus

First of all, we need to distinguish between (a) tariffs and (b) border controls. If you impose tariffs then you need mechanisms for enforcing payment, and border controls, inspections, etc are often among the mechanisms used. But border controls have a wider purpose than that; e.g. they are a mechanism for preventing the illegal importation of drugs, weaponry, etc, and for enforcing consumer protection measures - food safety standards, standards for electrical appliances, pharmaceuticals, etc. Even if you have no tariffs at all there is still a place for, and perhaps a need for, border controls.

So, the fact that Switzerland is reducing or abolishing tariffs on industrial goods, doesn't necessarily mean that they will abandon their border controls. Swiss consumers will benefit in that the industrial goods imported will be cheaper (by the amount of the tariff) and this will (hopefully) flow through to cheaper consumer goods produced by those industrial goods. But the costs associated with border controls won't go way.

The UK already doesn't have tariffs on most goods imported from the EU, so consumers already have that benefit. To the extend that the UK doesn't operate border controls, that also makes importing goods cheaper and quicker, and that's a benefit to consumers. On the other hand, it means the imported goods are of uncertain quality or legality, and that may be a detriment to consumers. It's also a detriment, obviously, to UK producers of competing goods, since they are regulated and have compliance obligations; they will feel they face unfair competition from effectively unregulated imports that don't face the same compliance costs.

As for the rules of origin on car batteries, there isn't really any dogma involved here. The Commission press release to which you link explains the situation:

1. EU is anxious to develop and maintain its own EV production capacity.
2. Brexit disrupted that, since UK production capacity was removed.
3. EU's response is to build up its own production capacity, but that takes time. A strategy to do this was put in place in 2020.
4. As an interim measure, UK batteries were to be treated as of EU origin until the end of 2023.
5. As the end of 2023 approached, it became apparent that the plan to increase EU production had not been delivered. This was ascribed (rightly or wrongly, I cannot say) to unforeseen events, including the Ukraine war, the Covid-19 pandemic and US subsidies for battery production.
6. The Commission has a two-fold response to this. First, extend the favourable treatment of UK batteries until the end of 2026. Secondly, increase investment in EU production to get the plan back on track.

I'm not sure that this is "getting less dogmatic". A neoliberal free market enthusiast would say that it's doubling down on the EU's dogmatic fetishization of becoming self-sufficient in EV production, and that to get less dogmatic the EU should extend its treatment UK batteries to batteries from all countries, and should do so permanently.

What it is is the EU acting in its own interests. This change was unilateral. It wasn't negotiated with the UK and the UK didn't give anything in return for it. It will be of benefit to UK battery producers, but that benefit is incidental; the change was made to benefit the EU, not the UK, and it will remain in place only for so long as suits the EU.

That's the thing about being a rule-taker. Sometimes the rules you have to take are not that bad. But, good or bad, you have to take them. You have no control over them.

mm_surf

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121580530#Comment_121580530

The delay is to allow the battery infrastructure to ramp up.

The industry (both EV and fixed storage) is gone from lithium-ion to LFP (lithium iron phosphate). Currently that manufacturing is heavily dominated by Chinese firms.

The newer batteries are much cheaper, safer and have some better characteristics for almost all applications.

I'm part of the team building the first mass production facility in the USA for the LFP material.

The US recently delayed its tarrif applications for the same reason.

M.

political analyst

Do the DUP really think that Labour - if it wins the British general election - will be sympathetic to them regarding the Windsor Framework?! If they do, then they are delusional.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121590173#Comment_121590173

Labour are perceived — rightly or wrongly — as being less wedded to hard Brexit, which the Windsor Framework was created to facilitate. So the advent of a Labour government opens up, to some extent, the possibility of changes to the terms of Brexit that could ameliorate the impact of the Windsor Framework, or create space for changes to the Windsor Framework.

That's the thinking, anyway. It's not that Labour are sympathetic to the DUP. It's that Labour aren't atavistically committed to a form of Brexit that requires the Windsor Framework. Any benefit to the DUP is entirely coincidental, but that doesn't mean it won't be beneficial.

Pete_Cavan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121590216#Comment_121590216

The ultimate irony here is that the Tories weren't atavistically committed to a form of Brexit that requires the Windsor Framework* either but the DUP were instrumental in facilitating the ERG in dragging everyone down that route.

*obviously the WF didn't exist at the time but other work-arounds were circulating to deal with the problems a hard Brexit was inevitably going to create (Back Stop, followed by Front Stop).

breezy1985

Essentially the hope is that Labour bring the entire UK inside the Windsor Framework bubble through alignment and "rule taking" which is the opposite of what the DUP actually wanted but I'm sure they will rewrite that history by shouting loud enough that everyone just gives up arguing with them.

Peregrinus

There's layer upon layer of irony here.

The first irony, already pointed out, is that the DUP threw themselves wholeheartedly into the push for hard Brexit that led to the UK seeking the NI Protocol in the first place.

This might have happened anyway. The DUP aren't that influential in UK politics, and were only a fairly minor part of the assembly of arsewits who pressed for hard Brexit, so we can't say their participation was decisive. Still, it is ironic.

The second irony it that, because the DUP are far too politically and psychologically insecure ever to admit that they have made a mistake on any matter whatsoever, they still remain (at least formally) committed to hard Brexit, even though it's now abundantly clear that it's the form of Brexit most harmful to the Union that is their supposed political priority.

And this brings yet a third irony. Because the DUP can't acknowledge that the hated Protocol was a demand of the hard Brexiter-dominated UK government, they have to pretend that it is something imposed on NI by IRL or by the EU. They therefore demand that IRL/EU should alter their positions and sacrifice their interests in order to protect NI from harm which is in fact inflicted by the Westminster government. We have the irony of unionists looking to the Republic to protect them from the Union to which they are supposedly committed.

On one level this is all great fun. We all enjoy a healthy bout of schadenfreude and, God knows, if anybody deserves to be hoist on their own petard it's the DUP. On another level, it's potentially very dangerous. At the very least, the whole of NI suffers because of the DUP's dysfunction. This is not just limited to the suspension of Stormont. The episode illustrates the fundamental contradictions inherent in the DUP's brand of unionism, and the DUP are unable to face up to this. They remain in a state of existential terror, but in denial about the fact and so unable to do anything to change their situation. They'll become more and more unstable, and behave more and more irrationally, to avoid confronting reality. I don't want to be alarmist, but the history of NI suggests that that could lead to some dark places.

Which means, though it is beyond the DUP to do anything to get themselves out of the hole they have dug, the grownups are going to have to do it for them. Not only do the DUP have to be rescued, but they have to be rescued by means which don't require them to face reality. Because any strategy that requires them to acknowledge reality will fail.

The most promising route to this has to be a softening of the UK's Brexit, which opens the way for amelioration of the protocol. That in turn requires a change of government in Westminster. But, even then, it's at best a medium-term prospect. Labour's current position is that they'll "make Brexit work", and (at least based on their public statements) the differences between their approach to Brexit and the Tory approach are pretty marginal. They won't have (because they won't seek) a mandate for a more radical approach, so the "make Brexit work" strategy must be tried, and must be seen to fail, before any material degree of rapprochement with the EU becomes politically possible. I think we could be looking at the second term of a Labour government before any real shift happens.

NI is in for a rough few years, I'm afraid.

yagan

In relation to the long term though NI is actually not badly off as cross border trade has massively grown thanks to the NIP.

The DUP may be going in circles but without British military and political protection there's little possibility at an attempt at forcing repartition, especially considering the majority of catholics in NI actually live east of the Bann. If the PUL fringes follow through with their threats of bombs in towns in the republic then it makes it even easier for the next British government to make the Irish Sea border a lot tighter, regardless of what approaches Britain might make towards the single market.

Brexit was a last ditch attempt by Carsonists to get back their little apartheid statelet, but they just can't admit publicly that was their motivation.

Pete_Cavan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121590677#Comment_121590677

The first irony, already pointed out, is that the DUP threw themselves wholeheartedly into the push for hard Brexit that led to the UK seeking the NI Protocol in the first place.

This might have happened anyway. The DUP aren't that influential in UK politics, and were only a fairly minor part of the assembly of arsewits who pressed for hard Brexit, so we can't say their participation was decisive. Still, it is ironic.

While the DUP were only a fairly minor part of the assembly of arsewits who pressed for hard Brexit, they gave credence to the arsewittery of that assembly. Let it never be underestimated just how much they screwed themselves.

I don't think the ERG would have been able to pull off what they did without having the DUP objections, "we can't turn our backs on our brothers in NI". The other irony of course is that the vote in NI rejected Brexit.

The ultimate irony may be yet to come: this whole sorry episode results in a weakening in support for the Union in NI.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121593030#Comment_121593030

I would disagree with this. Arlene Foster's skirt was just a convenient cover for the ERG. Without it, they'd have found an equally vapid excuse for their actions. Insufficient sovereignty, caving too much to Brussels or a paucity of liberal tears perhaps.

Failing to Brexit would have destroyed the Conservative party but any Brexit will fatally undermine the Union. Options considered unthinkable or beyond the pale are now regularly discussed and the DUP, had they voted as they promised Theresa May in 2017 they would could have prevented this.

It's truly baffling how they took arguably the best hand ever dealt to such a miniscule party in British, or even global politics, and did nothing but ensure the destruction of the union they allege to hold so dear. They can cry and shriek and clutch their precious shibboleths all they want but they did this to themselves. To the rest of us, they're just an embarrassment.

breezy1985

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121593030#Comment_121593030

What did the ERG "pull off" ?

political analyst

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121590216#Comment_121590216

Surely, Starmer won't want to deprive his government - if Labour wins the election - of the ability to do its own trade deals with other countries or to restrict migration from the European mainland.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121593627#Comment_121593627

They had more control over the migration that English voters care about when they were in the EU and hence covered by Dublin III

political analyst

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121593641#Comment_121593641

There's still the issue of the British government being able to do its own trade deals - Starmer won't want to give that up!