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Brexit discussion thread V - No Pic/GIF dumps please

Rhineshark

kuro68k wrote: »

The British government is going to take it right to the cliff edge and hope that someone else compromises. Of course they have their excuses already lined up if no-one does, only real question is who they will blame.

1. The EU
2. Remainers
3. Ireland
4. Corbyn

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Frank Bullitt

Didn't he have a go at Simon Harris...who isn't taking part in the talks about all of this?

He is as thick as a ditch, I can't understand why he gets air time.

Capt'n Midnight

Tell me how wrote: »

I don't think he is suggesting that it would help the Republic but that it would be better for Northern Irish people than one in the Irish sea.

A hard border doesn't help the Republic.

It's expensive and divisive.

It doesn't help NI either.

It's expensive and divisive.

The men of violence haven't gone away. But thanks to the common market there's isn't huge money to be made. A return to the days when smuggling was profitable won't be good.

fash

briany wrote: »

See, I'd always (naively?) assumed that a state can freely trade within itself, or at least set the terms of how it trades within itself, but now we're talking about taking one bit of a state and placing in, essentially, a separate economic bloc from the rest, and then having an outside party having a say in how the UK trades internally. And this isn't even a situation where there's any kind of territorial dispute (well, not any more), and sovereignty is fully agreed and recognised. If there is precedent and procedure for how unique setup can be smoothly run, it hasn't been well-enough publicised.

Although small, Büsingen and Campione d'Italia for example:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Büsingen_am_Hochrhein

Peregrinus

briany wrote: »

See, I'd always (naively?) assumed that a state can freely trade within itself, or at least set the terms of how it trades within itself, but now we're talking about taking one bit of a state and placing in, essentially, a separate economic bloc from the rest, and then having an outside party having a say in how the UK trades internally. And this isn't even a situation where there's any kind of territorial dispute (well, not any more), and sovereignty is fully agreed and recognised. If there is precedent and procedure for how unique setup can be smoothly run, it hasn't been well-enough publicised.

With the EU, what fash said. But, within the UK's own experience, and on a much bigger scale, there's the "one country, two systems" arrangement that Hong Kong has with the rest of China, which of course the UK was involved in negotiating and establishing.

briany

Peregrinus wrote: »

With the EU, what fash said. But, within the UK's own experience, and on a much bigger scale, there's the "one country, two systems" arrangement that Hong Kong has with the rest of China, which of course the UK was involved in negotiating and establishing.

Didn't the UK originally take Hong Kong at the end of a gun? Although the later system may have been peacefully arranged, I'm a little worried that a backstop arrangement will be used by certain politicians to appeal to a British mindset that can only understand such things in old colonial terms.

Peregrinus

briany wrote: »

Didn't the UK originally take Hong Kong at the end of a gun? Although the later system may have been peacefully arranged, I'm a little worried that a backstop arrangement will be used by certain politicians to appeal to a British mindset that can only understand such things in old colonial terms.

Weill, yes, but they originally took Ireland at the point of a gun too, so that's not really a point of distinction, is it?

But I'm not sure that that's all that relevant (in either case). The question is, are there precedents for part of the territory of one country to be in a separate customs area from the rest of its territory? The question is usually asked in a rhetorical tone, as though to suggest that the proposal for Northern Ireland is unprecedented and therefore suspect or objectionable. But the actual answer is that there are many such precedents, both contemporary and historical, and the UK has been involved in more than one of them. The notion is neither offensive in principal nor impossible to work in practice.

Peregrinus

blanch152 wrote: »

Look, a hard border blocks trade. Trade with the rest of the UK is more important to Northern Ireland than trade with the EU. That is an economic reality.

NI will suffer potential depression levels whether the hard border is with the rest of the UK or with the EU. What you and many others haven't thought of is that if the hard border is down the Irish Sea and the resultant depression hits them, who will they blame? The Southern government.

A hard border down the Irish Sea is no solution, and those who think it is are romantic dreamers who are blinkered by the thought of a united Ireland.

A hard border does block trade. And, yes, NI trades more with GB than it does with the RoI.

And, you're quite right: NI doesn't want either barriers to trade across the land border or increased barriers to trade across the Irish Sea. They've made that pretty clear.

But, if the English force them to choose one or the other, in economic terms the less damaging choice is increased controls in the Irish Sea. This is true even though NI trades more with GB than with RoI. "How can this be?", I hear you cry.

There's a couple of factors at work here, some of which have been touched on already. In no particular order:

- There's already a hard border to NI/GB trade. We call it the Irish Sea. It requires all goods to be transhipped, to be funnelled through a small number of ports, and to be documented. And, as we know, there are already regulatory controls on some of the trade over this border. Given all this, the marginal impact - i.e. the extra cost/delay - resulting from increasing the level of controls here is much smaller than the impact of introducing controls on the currently completely seamless land border.

- A related point: the much vaunted "technological solutions" have much greater potential to alleviate the impact of additional controls on the Irish Sea trade than they do to alleviate the impact at the land border - because of the small number of transit points (5 as opposed to 257), the fact that shipments are already checked and monitored (for commercial reasons), etc. The bulk of the Irish Sea trade is conducted by a small number of companies each doing a large volume of trade, and so well positioned to avail of things like trusted trader schemes. Whereas the opposite is true of the trade across the land border.

- Although NI trades much more with GB than with RoI, the bulk of that trade goes through RoI - mostly via the port of Dublin. So a hard land border impacts not only the NI/RoI trade, but also the majority of the NI/GB trade. (In fact it may impact it quite badly, since there will be two borders between them and their market - NI/RoI and RoI/GB. Whereas increased controls on the Irish Sea trade don't affect RoI trade at all, and only affect a minority of NI/GB trade.

It's considerations like these that have led pretty much all of the stakeholder representatives in NI - farmers, fishers, industry, transport - to come out in support of the WA. I'm open to correction here, but I don't think any of the economic stakeholders oppose the WA. That's pretty telling, in terms of where the economic arguments point.

Those who oppose the backstop do so not for economic or material reasons, but on account of identify politics. (Which of course has always been a powerful factor in NI.) But not all NI people who identify as British or Unionist see this as an issue that goes to their identity. There are plenty of influential voices from the community that would generally be regarded as unionist who support this deal, and I doubt that they regard themselves as less unionist, or less British, for doing so.

Spook_ie

prawnsambo wrote: »

Never mind what they're saying now. The UK owe the EU over £2.6 billion in uncollected tariffs on goods imported from China. That worked out well on a trust basis.

Wonder how much we owe for things like that, you see thread after thread asking about getting things through customs without the correct taxation being applied, and I imagine it's the same throughout the EU.

Peregrinus

Spook_ie wrote: »

Wonder how much we owe for things like that, you see thread after thread asking about getting things through customs without the correct taxation being applied, and I imagine it's the same throughout the EU.

There's a certain level of leakage everywhere, if only through travellers returning with purchases which they do not declare, or pragmatic decisions about the number or value of postal imports that will actually be checked.

But our total imports from China in 2017 were valued at USD 3.4 billion. If we had collected no customs duty at all on imports from China, at the EU average tariff rate of 2.6% that would represent a deficiency of about USD 100 million. In fact we did collect tariffs on the bulk of these imports, so actual defaults might be, say, 10% of that, tops. Say US 10 million.

Not a trivial sum, but well off the UK's bill. The problem in the UK was not revenue leakage of the ordinary kind, but systematic organised fraud, rendered possible by a policy decision by HMRC not to adopt measures to identify and challenge fraudulent invoices and forged documentation, even after they had been advised of the problem and asked to take step to tackle it.

I haven's seen any suggestion that there was a similar problem in Ireland.

Spook_ie

Peregrinus wrote: »

There's a certain level of leakage everywhere, if only through travellers returning with purchases which they do not declare, or pragmatic decisions about the number or value of postal imports that will actually be checked.

But our total imports from China in 2017 were valued at USD 3.4 billion. If we had collected no customs duty at all on imports from China, at the EU average tariff rate of 2.6% that would represent a deficiency of about USD 100 million. In fact we did collect tariffs on the bulk of these imports, so actual defaults might be, say, 10% of that, tops. Say US 10 million.

Not a trivial sum, but well off the UK's bill. The problem in the UK was not revenue leakage of the ordinary kind, but systematic organised fraud, rendered possible by a policy decision by HMRC not to adopt measures to identify and challenge fraudulent invoices and forged documentation, even after they had been advised of the problem and asked to take step to tackle it.

I haven's seen any suggestion that there was a similar problem in Ireland.

No not even declaring 1000 tons of Garlic from China as apples in 2013.

RobMc59

Peregrinus wrote: »

There's a certain level of leakage everywhere, if only through travellers returning with purchases which they do not declare, or pragmatic decisions about the number or value of postal imports that will actually be checked.

But our total imports from China in 2017 were valued at USD 3.4 billion. If we had collected no customs duty at all on imports from China, at the EU average tariff rate of 2.6% that would represent a deficiency of about USD 100 million. In fact we did collect tariffs on the bulk of these imports, so actual defaults might be, say, 10% of that, tops. Say US 10 million.

Not a trivial sum, but well off the UK's bill. The problem in the UK was not revenue leakage of the ordinary kind, but systematic organised fraud, rendered possible by a policy decision by HMRC not to adopt measures to identify and challenge fraudulent invoices and forged documentation, even after they had been advised of the problem and asked to take step to tackle it.

I haven's seen any suggestion that there was a similar problem in Ireland.

Singling out one particular nation as tax dodgers is hypocritical unless squeaky clean yourself which clearly isn't the case.

Peregrinus

Spook_ie wrote: »

No not even declaring 1000 tons of Garlic from China as apples in 2013.

But that was detected and prosecuted, and the customs duty was collected.

That's kind of the point. The problem is not that people try to evade customs duty; the problem was that an audit of customs processes found that the UK customs processes and practices facilitated this. The UK HMRC wasn't applying recommended procedures to detect or identify undervalued imports; imports which had no other connection with the UK were being routed through the UK to take advantage of this; and this was happening on a large scale.

And, for RobMc50's benefit, the UK wasn't singled out for this attention. The EU conducted an audit of import procedures at a number of European countries; only the UK was found to have this problem.

And it wasn't a hard-to-notice problem. Imports of clothing from China via the UK were given an average declared value of €0.91/kilo. At the time, the world price of unfinished cotton was €1.41/kilo, and the average price of imports of clothing from China in the rest of the EU was between €18.00 and €26.00/kilo. So the valuations being submitted to HMRC in the UK were, on the face of them, scarcely believable. Yet they were not queried or investigated.

farmchoice

Peregrinus wrote: »

But that was detected and prosecuted, and the customs duty was collected.

That's kind of the point. The problem is not that people try to evade customs duty; the problem was that an audit of customs processes found that the UK customs processes and practices facilitated this. The UK HMRC wasn't applying recommended procedures to detect or identify undervalued imports; imports which had no other connection with the UK were being routed through the UK to take advantage of this; and this was happening on a large scale.

And, for RobMc50's benefit, the UK wasn't singled out for this attention. The EU conducted an audit of import procedures at a number of European countries; only the UK was found to have this problem.

And it wasn't a hard-to-notice problem. Imports of clothing from China via the UK were given an average declared value of €0.91/kilo. At the time, the world price of unfinished cotton was €1.41/kilo, and the average price of imports of clothing from China in the rest of the EU was between €18.00 and €26.00/kilo. So the valuations being submitted to HMRC in the UK were, on the face of them, scarcely believable. Yet they were not queried or investigated.

Can i just take the opportunity to thank this post and all the ones like it from Peregrinus. It is because of this level of detail and understanding this thread keeps going in the manner it does.
this thread is simply brilliant and it is because we have this poster and others like him/her
it is easy to see how it could quickly desend into nothing more that baseless opinion otherwise.
a thousand thanks to Peregrinus and all the other posters who go to the trouble of producing facts and well thought out arguments.
keep her lit.

Hurrache

Deleted User wrote: »

Hermann got the bums rush fairly quickly, might have been worth watching for comedy value if he'd stayed.

Gintonious wrote: »

Didn't he have a go at Simon Harris...who isn't taking part in the talks about all of this?

He is as thick as a ditch, I can't understand why he gets air time.

That's the part I tuned into before switching off. Yeah, he said Simon Harris, his mistake was pointed out but he doubled down and insisted he meant Simon Harris all along. When asked why he was bringing Harris into it, he said it was because he looked like a school kid or something like that. Amazing.

Water John

Amber Rudd back in the thick of it, great. She says this morning that Parliament won't allow a No Deal Brexit. Whether this is an alternative message from No 10 or Amber going her own way, is hard to say.
She is now in a position where TM cannot touch her as she took the blow for TM when it was TM's fault.

RobMc59

Peregrinus wrote: »

But that was detected and prosecuted, and the customs duty was collected.

That's kind of the point. The problem is not that people try to evade customs duty; the problem was that an audit of customs processes found that the UK customs processes and practices facilitated this. The UK HMRC wasn't applying recommended procedures to detect or identify undervalued imports; imports which had no other connection with the UK were being routed through the UK to take advantage of this; and this was happening on a large scale.

And, for RobMc50's benefit, the UK wasn't singled out for this attention. The EU conducted an audit of import procedures at a number of European countries; only the UK was found to have this problem.

And it wasn't a hard-to-notice problem. Imports of clothing from China via the UK were given an average declared value of €0.91/kilo. At the time, the world price of unfinished cotton was €1.41/kilo, and the average price of imports of clothing from China in the rest of the EU was between €18.00 and €26.00/kilo. So the valuations being submitted to HMRC in the UK were, on the face of them, scarcely believable. Yet they were not queried or investigated.

The level of detail and your knowledge of tax avoidance matters is indeed extensive.What is your opinion of state sponsored funnelling of royalties by large corporations in some EU countries ?

farmchoice

RobMc59 wrote: »

The level of detail and your knowledge of tax avoidance matters is indeed extensive.What is your opinion of state sponsored funnelling of royalties by large corporations in some EU countries ?

this thread is about brexit, the issue of the uk's failure to correctly collect vat was referenced in relation to the effect it might have on the EU's attitude to the UK when it came to trust in any future relationship arising from Brexit.

the tax affairs of other EU's countries who are not in the process of leaving the EU is irrelevant and it as they say up north whataboutery

Tell me how

Water John wrote: »

Amber Rudd back in the thick of it, great. She says this morning that Parliament won't allow a No Deal Brexit. Whether this is an alternative message from No 10 or Amber going her own way, is hard to say.
She is now in a position where TM cannot touch her as she took the blow for TM when it was TM's fault.

How though can parliament stop a No Deal? Aside from voting for this deal which Theresa is presenting. The clock is running.
It's like saying that unless you can die of natural causes, you refuse to die.

Leroy42

Because Parliament still believes that it is the UK only situation, that the EU simply has to wait until the UK decide what way to go and then sign the papers.

Hurrache

Raab strikes me as the guy who sits at on a project saying or doing nothing. But when it's all done and you go to the pub after, he bitches to everyone how everything is all wrong and would have been better if we done x,y and z.

https://twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1065169760088936449

I had forgot Fintan O'Toole was going to be on James O'Brien this morning, must catch up and see how that went.

farmchoice

Leroy42 wrote: »

Because Parliament still believes that it is the UK only situation, that the EU simply has to wait until the UK decide what way to go and then sign the papers.

thats about the height of it.

before all this i thought i knew the UK/England.

im 42 years old i have been politically aware all my life, my earliest memories are things like the hunger strikes and the Falklands war.
i have lived in England and i have studied with an english university. i know and have know countless English, Scottish, welsh people.

i truly believed that the England i see now died out 50 years ago but the arrogance and self regard and extraordinary hubris on show has really shook me.

LeinsterDub

Hurrache wrote: »

Raab strikes me as the guy who sits at on a project saying or doing nothing. But when it's all done and you go to the pub after, he bitches to everyone how everything is all wrong and would have been better if we done x,y and z.

https://twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1065169760088936449

I had forgot Fintan O'Toole was going to be on James O'Brien this morning, must catch up and see how that went.

He's on now

Sam Russell

Tell me how wrote: »

How though can parliament stop a No Deal? Aside from voting for this deal which Theresa is presenting. The clock is running.
It's like saying that unless you can die of natural causes, you refuse to die.

Well, they could pass a decision that in the event of the current deal being voted down, then the UK would remain in the EU, subject to the EU agreeing to the withdrawal of Art 50.

If they did that, then the end point is Remain, not Crash Out on March 29th.

Leroy42

But in that case they are not voting down a no deal, they are sending the UK back to the EU to try to renegotiate. This may well be an extension but the ball lies totally in the EU court.

Even since the deal was leaked, many in the UK are pushing the line that they simply need to go back and try harder. Prepare a new deal and get the EU to sign it.

The choice is pretty clear. They either go with this deal or crash out. They may want other options, they may have thought they would get other options, but this is what they face.

Even yesterday, Davis was stating that a FTA is far more beneficial than a CU. The problem is that the UK are turning their noses up at the proposed EU deal, yet somehow think the EU will be happy to give them whatever deal on a FTA they wish. Davis of all people, should be called up on the spot about this. Why did he not simply agree to whatever WA agreement at the start and start the FTA negotiations straight away.

The other nonsense that is still being pedaled is the line that the divorce payment is somehow to do with the WA and a price for a FTA. It isn't. They can refuse to pay of course, but you can bet it will form part of any FTA negotiations. UK still spout that they can welch on their financial obligations and then simply walk back into the room on a clean slate.

Peregrinus

RobMc59 wrote: »

The level of detail and your knowledge of tax avoidance matters is indeed extensive.What is your opinion of state sponsored funnelling of royalties by large corporations in some EU countries ?

Royalties? Not sure I know exactly what you're referring to here.

But, in general, yeah, international tax avoidance opportunities are an issue that requires international action, and I've suggested before that Ireland needs to be involved in this discussion rather than standing aloof from it. But I've also suggested that it needs a thread of its own; it's not really a Brexit issue.

lawred2

Hurrache wrote: »

Raab strikes me as the guy who sits at on a project saying or doing nothing. But when it's all done and you go to the pub after, he bitches to everyone how everything is all wrong and would have been better if we done x,y and z.

https://twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1065169760088936449

I had forgot Fintan O'Toole was going to be on James O'Brien this morning, must catch up and see how that went.

Raab is being reckless with such commentary. This is straight up nationalistic fire stoking.

An Ciarraioch

Sam Russell wrote: »

Tell me how wrote: »

How though can parliament stop a No Deal? Aside from voting for this deal which Theresa is presenting. The clock is running.
It's like saying that unless you can die of natural causes, you refuse to die.

Well, they could pass a decision that in the event of the current deal being voted down, then the UK would remain in the EU, subject to the EU agreeing to the withdrawal of Art 50.

If they did that, then the end point is Remain, not Crash Out on March 29th.

The Opposition also seem to be looking at the plan of Tory MP Nick Boles, which by now appears to have evolved into permanent Norway status with bespoke customs elements.

An Ciarraioch

Interesting comment by May just now during PMQs - whole UK could effectively remain in the Single Market during the backstop to avoid any divergence between GB and NI:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2018/nov/21/brexit-pmqs-may-corbyn-rudd-says-mps-wont-allow-no-deal-brexit-contradicting-may-politics-live

briany

If the British parliament opts to revoke A50, I wonder what the likelihood of proper civil disorder and violence would be from the remaining Brexiteers on the ground? And would UKIP go from being a boogeyman for the Conservatives to sweeping however many dozens of their seats in the next British GE?

An Ciarraioch

briany wrote: »

If the British parliament opts to revoke A50, I wonder what the likelihood of proper civil disorder and violence would be from the remaining Brexiteers on the ground? And would UKIP go from being a boogeyman for the Conservatives to sweeping however many dozens of their seats in the next British GE?

Even in the post WA polls, UKIP were on 7-8%, but the way FPTP works, parties have to win approximately 20% of the vote before they become a concentrated electoral threat.