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Should the UK remain a member of the EU


Anny Road
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317 members have voted

  1. 1. Should the UK remain a member of the EU

    • Yes
      259
    • No
      58


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1 hour ago, Captain Howdy said:

“Clear eyed approach” to human rights record? The fuck does that mean?

Coming from a Government who yesterday announced another Human Rights crackdown of our own.

I don't think the Hong Kong democracy movement or the Uighurs can heave a sigh of relief just yet.

https://goodlawproject.org/news/they-want-to-silence-dissent/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social media&utm_campaign=pcsc tw 1003 &s=09

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It's just gaslighting plain and simple at this point.

 

The highlighted bit is just incredible that a non elected 'minster' can come out with this bullshit, especially when it's demonstrably false.

 

https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-government-misused-trade-data-in-brexit-rebuttal-labour-claims/

 

'Britain’s Labour opposition party have questioned the legality of the government’s use of trade figures to hit back at Brexit concerns voiced by industry groups.  

 

Shadow Trade Secretary Emily Thornberry said in a letter trade minister Greg Hands, seen by POLITICO, that she was “struggling” to see how the government’s rebuttal of figures from the Road Haulage Association was “consistent with what is legally permitted” under the Trade (Disclosure of Information) Act 2020. That legislation was rushed through parliament in a single day in December because the government said it was a critical tool to monitor the impact of Brexit.

 

The move adds fuel to a spat over Brexit trade figures that has lingered since early February. Last week, the UK Statistics Authority, an independent data watchdog, reprimanded the government for a lack of transparency after it issued a rebuttal of survey data from the hauliers’ body without making its own figures public. Trade statistics have been mired in controversy in the U.K. since the Brexit referendum in 2016. The data has become highly politicized, used by those for and against leaving the EU to support contradictory arguments about the importance of EU-U.K. trade. 

 

On February 7, the RHA published figures based on a survey that suggested exports traveling through British ports to the EU had fallen by more than two-thirds (68 percent). The Cabinet Office issued a rebuttal blog post in response, marked as a “News story.” It used unpublished, and therefore unverifiable, figures to suggest the RHA’s survey data was incorrect.

 

After the UK Statistics Authority issued their reprimand, the Cabinet Office issued a note explaining where their unofficial figures had come from on Wednesday, including references to figures from November. The U.K.’s source for official data is the independent Office for National Statistics (ONS).

 

This note, Thornberry’s letter states, suggests the government is using trade data legislation passed in December, retrospectively, and hence outside the law’s scope. The legislation was rushed through parliament with the acquiescence of opposition parties to avoid critical Brexit disruption, said Thornberry, who contends that the government is now misusing it.

 

Thornberry’s letter, addressed to Trade Minister Greg Hands, asked: “... do you feel that the use of the Act’s provisions by Cabinet Office Ministers to engage in a rebuttal operation against the Road Haulage Association is consistent with your own public and private statements about the purpose of the Act, and about the urgency of securing its passage in December?” The Cabinet Office used sensitive data from HMRC that’s used to monitor the live movement of goods through ports in its rebuttal blog post. This included real-time ferry manifest data and historical data. Labour says the historical use of the data may not be consistent with the legislation.

 

This data, which formed the basis for the Cabinet Office rebuttal, has still not been published in full, and, according to people familiar with the matter, it is unlikely that it will be in the future, as it is too commercially sensitive. The Cabinet Office’s explanatory note also aggregates some data used for a chart due to its commercially sensitive nature. Official statistics published Friday, separate from those used by the Cabinet Office, showed a sharp fall in imports and exports to the EU. The drop in exports (40.7 percent), was not as severe as the RHA data suggested. However, the ONS figures came with significant caveats due to Brexit-related stockpiling in the lead-up to January and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

In what appeared to be another public statement based on data which is not in the public domain, David Frost, the official who led the negotiation of the U.K.'s post-Brexit trade deal with the EU tweeted in response to official statistics: "The latest information indicates that overall freight volumes between the UK and the EU have been back to their normal levels for over a month now, ie since the start of February."

 

When asked for comment, a Cabinet Office spokesperson referred back to the explanatory note published this week. The Department for Trade did not respond to a request for comment.

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4 minutes ago, Bruce Spanner said:

I think it's safe to say it's going really well and will be even better when we finally enact the real import/export standards and criteria.

1843.jpg?width=620&quality=45&auto=forma

Blue passports though, and we can be cunts to the furrins without any comeback.

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Festival of Brexit has started to leak some of the attractions for its jamboree post plague...

 

A celebration of the British weather and the largest grow-your-own food project of modern times will be among the events being staged for a nationwide festival of creativity aimed at bringing the UK together in 2022.’

 

Nice to see reality is kicking in.

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15 minutes ago, Bruce Spanner said:

Festival of Brexit has started to leak some of the attractions for its jamboree post plague...

 

A celebration of the British weather and the largest grow-your-own food project of modern times will be among the events being staged for a nationwide festival of creativity aimed at bringing the UK together in 2022.’

 

Nice to see reality is kicking in.

Tens of thousands huddled around allotment or garden veg patches in the freezing rain, hoping that the spud harvest will be good this year so they don't starve to death.

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12 hours ago, Bruce Spanner said:

Festival of Brexit has started to leak some of the attractions for its jamboree post plague...

 

A celebration of the British weather and the largest grow-your-own food project of modern times will be among the events being staged for a nationwide festival of creativity aimed at bringing the UK together in 2022.’

 

Nice to see reality is kicking in.


This has all the hallmarks of Tory Glastonbury.

 

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Another Brexit success. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/24/uk-firm-to-stop-using-british-pork-after-post-brexit-border-problems-helen-browning

 



UK firm to stop using British pork after post-Brexit border problems
Helen Browning’s Organic says it is switching to Danish suppliers owing to bureaucracy, delays and costs

How Brexit added layers of bureaucracy to meat exports

A UK food company whose products appear on the shelves of the country’s largest supermarkets has decided to stop using British pork in its sausages because of the post-Brexit complications of moving meat across borders.

After two disastrous attempts since January to send British pork to Germany, where it is made into 75 tonnes of organic sausages annually, the firm behind Helen Browning’s Organic says it has been forced to drop its support for UK farmers and switch to Danish suppliers.

“The cost, the complexity, and the sheer time and effort it takes to manage an export, it’s just not worth it,” said Vicky McNicholas, the firm’s managing director.

Helen Browning’s Organic, which is named after the Wiltshire farmer who founded the business, supplies beef and pork products to some of Britain’s biggest retailers including Sainsbury’s, Ocado, and Abel and Cole, and is about to launch at Tesco.

The news will come as a further blow for British pig farmers, who have warned the government about the “unprecedented challenges” the industry is facing, because of problems exporting pigs and pork to the EU and Northern Ireland since Brexit.

The latest government statistics show UK food exports to the EU have decreased by at least 45% since 1 January.

Many smaller food producers have been “shut out” of sending produce to the EU since Brexit, according the Food and Drink Federation, which has analysed the figures from HM Revenue & Customs.

Beef exports decreased by 92% in January, down from £40m in the same month last year to £3m, while pork exports fell by 87% and lamb and mutton by 45%. All of these meat products feature in the UK’s top 10 exports to the EU.

A Guardian analysis of information from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) shows that since Brexit meat exports now require a 26-step process, which is fraught with bureaucracy and generates a mound of paperwork.

For two decades, Helen Browning’s Organics sausages – which account for about a quarter of its sales – have been manufactured in Germany because of, according to the company, a lack of a suitable factory in the UK. The vast majority (85%) of its sausages, representing 300,000 packets of sausages annually, were re-exported to Britain to be sold to UK consumers.

Before Brexit, borderless trade with the EU meant the firm fcould easily send pork to its Bavarian factory. That has changed since 1 January, when customs controls were introduced.

Both shipments of meat the company sent to the EU since then were held up at French customs for several days, which is problematic for perishable goods such as meat. In addition, each load cost the firm £3,500 more to send than in December 2020, adding around 25p to the cost of each £3.99 packet of sausages.

As a result, the company has decided to source the pork for its sausages in Denmark, but this has already meant the loss of some UK customers, who only sell British meat.

“This is a huge step to take. We’re all about supporting British farmers. It goes against everything that we want to do. It doesn’t sit comfortably with us,” McNicholas said.

“There is a knock-on effect for us of all these decisions. It’s not as simple as just using EU meat. We have to change packaging and labelling,” she added.
McNicholas said she was also concerned by the government’s decision to delay the introduction of import controls on EU goods, including meat, until 1 January 2022, because she said this meant trade was easier for EU businesses sending goods.

“It is not a level playing field. We have to bring the sausages back into the country, and they just arrive,” she said.

Other meat producers have also stopped exporting to the EU since January, according to a member survey conducted by the British Meat Processors Association (BMPA). The trade body found that meat exports reached only between 30% and 40% of pre-Brexit levels in the first six weeks of the year.

Peter Hardwick, a trade policy adviser at the BMPA, said “The involved and complex procedures required to export have led to a doubling of the costs of exporting as well as doubling end to end delivery times. These risk a longer term, possibly permanent, reduction in trade with the EU.”

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4 minutes ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

That does illustrate the madness of modern food production, though: you could live within a mile of the pig farm and think that you're doing your bit for the environment by eating local, organic sausages, oblivious to the fact that they'd been to Bavaria and back.

True, but according to the company, there was nowhere suitable to produce them in the UK. 

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53 minutes ago, Tj hooker said:

Get the violins out , if you live in Spain as part of the EU Then surely you can't be surprised when this happens can you 

IMG_20210327_154936.jpg

What a shame. Not really for Shaun, but for the UK having to accept these morons back.

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On 22/03/2021 at 17:54, Bruce Spanner said:

I think it's safe to say it's going really well and will be even better when we finally enact the real import/export standards and criteria.

1843.jpg?width=620&quality=45&auto=forma


Where is that from, that is a spectacular fall?

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