Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

That bike ride thing is one of millions of post Brexit anecdotes.

A thing they used to do without issue they tried to do again the same way except now it’s more difficult.

Now if you want to go on a charity bike ride in the EU you absolutely can, but to expect to just rock up to a different country with all of your equipment is naive at best. I would imagine they’d at least need a carnet listing all of the items they’re bringing, their purpose and confirming that they have no intent to sell them while they’re there.

Its going to take years for the Brits to truly fathom how difficult they’ve made life for themselves.

How do you differentiate between 'applying the rules' and 'pettiness'? Who gets to make the call? Who decides which can be exceptions? Maybe the UK could get its act together and make agreements with European countries about which groups of people or individuals can cross borders with what equipment or purpose. Its a bit difficult for the UK to understand these regulations at the moment because they are not actually applying them themselves, but nonetheless the regulations are now there and have to be dealt with.

Of course they will have to negotiate with every country separately, wouldn't it be convenient if there were some sort of organisation that could speak on behalf of all the countries and have easily understood rules (or even a lack of rules) for all of them?

Tbh the Guardian Article that was quoted above and the quote I extracted only mentioned Exports, not imports. Seth Brundle's analysis removed inflation, which is good. A better comparison might be today vs. pre-covid vs. the original base date. Exports haven't declined, nor does the article really get into what's contributing to the export rise and where it would be without Brexit. That's been mentioned elsewhere though and I am content to think that UK exports are doing much more poorly due to Brexit than if there was never a Brexit. Certainly that brewer mentioned in the article is fecked, but hey, they were buddies with HMG so no complaints.

Also, NI to ROI has gone up a lot by all reports, which is contributing. And totally unsurprising, NI has the best deal wrt Single Market access.

Liz will fix all that, though!

The charity thing is just trying to "won't somebody think of the children" the conversation.

Get the feeling this is to pacify Unionists for a while. They're treating it as a win after having a strop at her not mentioning the Protocol at all, on Twitter.

There's definitely no need for the Irish Govt or the EU to worry particularly anyway. All he can do is throw his weight around for a while, but nobody is going to pay much attention to a Brexit zealot or give him any credibility.

If you were a customs officer at that port, would you risk your job handing over a crate of bikes to someone with no documentation based on their word alone?

Calling it petty is a toddlers viewpoint. They won’t let me do what I want so they must hate me. Absolutely no thought into how it might affect others.