Today in Parliament should be very interesting indeed!
But let’s consider a few other things first.
Her Majesty’s Treasury has confirmed that the UK will remain in the Common Transit Convention after Brexit. Continued membership of the convention will ensure the continuation of the current simplified cross-border trade for UK businesses exporting their goods. This was confirmed in an official statement by the Treasury on the 18th of December, 2018.
Let me say that again: the UK will remain in the Common Transit Convention (CTC) after Brexit, ensuring continuing simplified cross-border trade for UK businesses exporting or importing goods.
The CTC is the agreement that is used for moving goods between the EU member states, the EFTA countries (Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland) as well as ensuring the free movement of goods between all of the above (including the UK) and Turkey, Macedonia and Serbia.
The UK is currently a member of the CTC while it is in the EU, and has successfully negotiated continuing membership in its own right after Brexit no matter what sort of Brexit happens. This has happened because those who run the CTC (and the CSFTG, see below) have no authority or right in law to exclude the UK. Her Majesty’s Treasury has confirmed this on the 18th of December, 2018. This would apply to any new trading relationship with the EU or, as I’ve already said, even if there is no deal. You will notice, however, that not one of the various mainstream media organisations has seen fit to publicise this. Instead, they are all busy promoting ‘project fear’. Why? Well, I’m sure you can work that one out!
Let’s consider the following quote from H.L. Mencken:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
Ha! ‘Project fear’ in a nutshell! And, oh boy, if one has listened to the utter rubbish that Al-Beeb has seen fit to broadcast over the last two and a half years then you are probably preparing for the end of the world and the second coming preceded by four strange horsemen. Honestly, they must think we’re stupid . . . oh, wait, they do! They’ve said as much! For something that is at least a partial antidote to the crap pushed by the BBC and the rest of the lamestream media take a look at http://news-watch.co.uk/ .
And maybe everyone should consider reading David Sedgwick’s (badly written but tolerable) book “BBC: Brainwashing Britain?” It gives a refreshingly different take on the way that an institution like Al-Beeb operates as well as a demonstration of the Beeb as a case study for the “long march through the institutions”. One shouldn’t take everything in the book exactly as it is written, but it is worth reading.
Anyway, membership of the CTC will ensure that trade moves freely between the UK and ALL CTC members after the UK leaves the EU. It will, as it has always done, provide cash flow benefits to traders and aid trade flow at key points of entry into the UK and exit from it, as traders will only have to make customs declarations and pay import, or export, duties when they arrive at their final destination, as they always have done.
Membership of the CTC, and its supplementary Convention the Convention on the Simplification of Formalities in the Trade of Goods (CSFTG) also in use in its present form since the 20th of May, 1987, reduces administrative burdens on traders by removing the need for any additional import/export declarations when transiting across multiple customs territories. It also provides cash flow benefits by allowing the movement of goods across a customs territory without the payment of duties until the final destination – countries that are not in the Convention would normally have to pay each time their goods crossed a border.
Similar provisions exist within the World Trade Organisation’s rules and when the UK exits the EU then that provision would, under the WTO rules, be automatically activated and the UK would be able to trade with countries not in the CTC with the same ease that it will trade with those that are – in fact with the same ease that it is already using in its existing trade with countries not in the CTC. Further, the UK will be able to continue trading with countries that are not in the EU on exactly the same bases as are now used, or on WTO terms, or the UK can implement new trade agreements if it so chooses.
Now, add to this the fact that all the ports on both sides of the Channel and the North Sea use highly automated interlocking, computerised and international (world wide actually) systems to process both goods and passengers and it is easy to see there will be no problems with trade – contrary to the idiotic ‘project fear’ propaganda. To use just one example, the UK Customs Service together with the Port of Dover Authority have said many, many times that there will be no increase in the current processing time of just a few seconds (yes, you read that correctly – just a few seconds). Only trucks that they are interested in for obvious reasons to do with smuggling and tax evasion and such like will, as already happens, take longer. The same applies at Calais, as the authorities there have said many, many times as well. All other ports and authorities have repeatedly said the same thing. Why are the Remainiacs not listening? Why are they busy fabricating unfounded scare stories?
Note, however, that trucks and goods that require sanitary checks or other cargo clearance checks on plant material, meats, animals or other prohibited or legally controlled items will, as happens now on both sides of the channel and the north sea, will take the usual much longer time to clear customs – usually, on an ordinary day, about eight to twenty minutes, if everything is in order that is. But, note, there are no proposals to change anything.
Also, let’s take a quick look at what the Port of Bristol has just announced (joining the long list of British and European ports that have said more or less exactly the same sort of thing). Whilst absurd Project Fear scare stories continue inside the bubble, inside the M25 London ring road that is, outside (elsewhere in the country, that is) there is great optimism about the opportunities of Brexit, even at Bristol Port. Declaring themselves ‘Brexit ready’, Chief Executive David Brown has said:
“We remain confident that our systems and operations will continue to function smoothly and efficiently once we leave the EU and whether there is a deal or not.
“We have had excellent dialogue with the relevant government departments and we expect any additional administrative burden to be kept to a minimum.
“And the one thing that Brexit cannot change is our geography and we strongly believe our West coast gateway will enable us to thrive and flourish in the post-Brexit trading climate.”
He has also pointed out that:
“65% of the cargo that Bristol Port deals with is non-EU, with the majority imported under World Trade Organisation rules.
“We remain confident that our systems and operations will continue to function smoothly and efficiently once we leave the EU and whether there is a deal or not.
“Bristol Port does not deal with food for people nor with accompanied roll-on roll-off trailers. We expect any additional administrative burden to be kept to a minimum and we anticipate that activity levels will increase in the years ahead – whatever the final Brexit outcome.”
With a recent £7 million investment, he went on to say the Port has:
“considerable extra capacity to handle an increase in container traffic”
if traffic is diverted from Dover. And he pointed out that more than 65% of Bristol Port’s goods come from the rest of world, with the vast bulk traded under WTO rules.
Let’s look at port facilities generally since the ‘project fear’ propaganda about our ports exemplifies the sort of rubbish about Brexit that is being spouted.
Writing to the Telegraph newspaper “on behalf of the United Kingdom’s major port operators, responsible for handling 75 per cent of the country’s seaborne trade”, Mr. Tim Morris, the Chief Executive of the United Kingdom Major Ports Group, was highly dismissive of headlines suggesting a clean break with the EU on World Trade Organization (WTO) terms – ‘No Deal’ – would result in trade seizing up.
Morris noted that while the Port of Dover could face certain “risk factors” due to its “unique” geographical circumstances, it handles less than 6 percent of British port volumes, and the same geophysical issues do not exist at Britain’s other major trade hubs.
“These ports already have the capacity and infrastructure to handle large volumes of both EU and non-EU trade today without ‘logjam’,” he explained.
“The UK’s port sector is resilient, adaptable and highly competitive. We will work through the challenges of Brexit as we have with huge changes through the centuries. Our island nation has always been dependent on sea trade and the ports that enable it.”
The United Kingdom is essentially unique in the European Union in that it already does the vast bulk of its trade outside the EU’s Customs Union, despite Remainer claims that being outside it would see British exporters and importers faced with virtually insurmountable obstacles.
The United Kingdom Major Ports Group – which Mr. Morris notes is investing “more than half a billion pounds of private-sector funds a year” in its operations – is anticipating the benefits of a genuine Brexit, which could see the country’s global trade supercharged once it reclaims control over international trade policy from Brussels and begins striking new agreements with countries like the United States, New Zealand, Canada, Singapore, Australia and so on. Has it never, in all this debate, struck you as odd that so many different and disparate countries are queuing up to get trade deals with the UK?
Brexiteer MPs have also noted the potential for the establishment of a series of “free ports” around the United Kingdom after Brexit, which could create tens of thousands of jobs and turn Britain’s coastal communities into real growth engines – especially if coupled with the management of Britain’s national fishing grounds reverting to us from EU control.
But, of course, only The Telegraph published such a positive statement from a major organisation. Al-Beeb ignored it then two weeks later attempted to rubbish Mr Morris’s reputation by calling him ‘an amateur politician’, which he isn’t, and an opinionated, self appointed quangocrat’, which he also isn’t. Various magazines and newspapers followed Al-Beeb’s lead and tried to destroy Mr. Morris’s reputation. They were unsuccessful, but not for the want of trying.
Now, to me it’s obvious that sensible businesses are gearing up for the opportunities that Brexit brings, Deal or No Deal. It is time for the government to deliver and the country to benefit from becoming a globally-focused, independent nation again. Being tied to the sclerotic and failing EU economy and the EU’s weird, Frankfurt School left-wing and authoritarian approach to economics and to people and their rights as humans, not to mention the EU’s strange belief in population replacement theories (and practices), has been a disaster for the UK and one that has to end now if we are to have any hope of being fiscally solvent in the long run, and remaining a free and democratic society.
It doesn’t matter how often those at the coalface say something, the simple truth is that if it doesn’t fit the Remainiac narrative mainly being pushed by the mainstream media it’s simply ignored.
Delays at ports like Dover are not due to paperwork, and will never be due to paperwork even after Brexit, but rather they are due to the physical problems of getting increasing numbers of vehicles onto and off ferries, and cross channel trains, and sometimes due to strikes and so forth, and those sorts of delays will always exist but they will not be made any worse by any type of Brexit. Delays will, of course, be made a lot worse by the UK’s failure to build sufficient adequate port infrastructure to match the modern ever-increasing volume of goods movements, but we are by no means alone in that.
However, it should be noted that container ports process containers using the same high speed automated world-wide computerised integrated systems as any other type of port and that these systems too, just like those at such ports as Dover and Calais and Rotterdam and Bristol and Hamburg and at others too numerous to list here, have been in place for years. A substantial number of all the containers that are taken off ships in UK ports are bound for places elsewhere in the EU. This happens because there are not enough container port facilities on the continental mainland to handle all the shipments that need to be made so they are spread around all the container ports, including the UK’s, Norway’s, Gibralter’s and Turkey’s to ensure that trade keeps flowing.
Most often the port that any particular container uses to get its contents into the EU is determined by purely logistical factors. Transport logistics is an arcane art but by and large the few people in Europe, including the UK, who are actually responsible for working everything out have got it very right even though they have to work within the constraint of a limited number of container ports. They have all said that they will change absolutely nothing after Brexit because they can’t, not just because of the Conventions, but also because it’s unnecessary and practically impossible to change anything anyway.
So, obviously that will continue after the UK leaves the EU because it has to. There is no physical infrastructure option for the other countries of the EU but to continue doing as they do currently and the CTC and the CSFTG (and WTO rules where applicable – see Turkey) will automatically ensure this.
I am completely and utterly fed up with people who know absolutely nothing about business, trade and international trade (and the various Conventions that govern those things) saying the most ridiculous things about Brexit and trying to convince the public that the apocalypse is coming – ‘project fear’, in other words. It’s utter and complete rubbish – there will be no break in trade because there can’t be a break in trade without causing major problems for all the economies of Europe (and many out with Europe, too), the UK’s included. And there can’t be a break, either, without the same countries or organisations, the EU and/or its constituent countries that is, flouting and disregarding their obligations under the various Conventions that they have signed and ratified some time ago – Conventions that they, and we, have been using for decades (actually, in the present form of the Conventions, since the 20th of May, 1987).
Once again, let me say that trade will continue as normal. There’ll be no food shortages, no drug shortages, no shortages of any kind unless the EU countries break the Conventions’ rules or deliberately decide to screw things up in some other way. The CTC and the CSFTG are specifically designed to keep trade flowing and that’s what they’ll do – just as they always have done – and just as WTO rules also do.
A senior civil servant has blown the whistle on “Project Fear Mark III”, revealing that the country is actually well-prepared for a “No Deal” Brexit and scare stories about Britain “crashing out” into “chaos and doom” are “absolutely untrue”. He’s notionally anonymous but we all know exactly which Cabinet Office official it is and he’s high ranking enough for us to know that what he says about Brexit preparations must be accurate.
Anyway, the ‘anonymous’ official, who has been working on Britain’s preparations for a Brexit on World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms – the so-called ‘No Deal’ scenario, revealed in a Telegraph article that there are “hundreds” of plans in place to ensure that outlandish threats of food, water, and medicine shortages will not be realised, and that “it is purely a political decision not to make this clear to the public and nervous backbench MPs”.
“Project Fear Mark (I think) III, or it could be Mark IV or V or whatever, claims that we will all ‘crash out’ over the white cliffs of Dover into the Channel at 11 p.m. on 29 March 2019 and wake up to certain chaos and doom . . . it is absolutely untrue, as anyone who, like me, has been involved in Brexit work for the past two-and-a-half years in Whitehall will tell you,” he scoffed.
The whistleblower suggested there has been a conscious decision by
“. . . Remainer Cabinet Ministers trying to scare us into swallowing [Theresa May’s] Withdrawal Agreement, and their friends campaigning for a second referendum”
– he singled out Amber Rudd’s europhile brother Roland, in particular –
“. . . to allow scare stories to run unchecked, in order to persuade backbench MPs and members of the public that “we must accept whatever outrageous terms we are offered by an intransigent EU because we are not prepared for no-deal and it would be a disaster” (remember the Mencken quote above!).
“. . . of course no-deal preparations have been made. Very detailed plans have been proposed, assessed, analysed to death and finally agreed by working groups and steering groups and directors’ boards and cross-Whitehall talking shops. They have then been sent to ministers for approval. And they are now being executed,”
. . . the official revealed.
‘Project fear’ – honestly, what guff, and promulgated by Remainiacs in what can only be described as a deliberate way to fool the credulous and the simple minded; to strike panic into the hearts of ordinary people whom they view as gullibly stupid and wrong thinking (the Mencken quote, dare I say it again, is oh so apposite).
It was businessmen and women who set the Conventions up and got governments and the EU to agree to them and to sign them. It was businessmen and women who campaigned for and drafted the WTO rules and lobbied almost all the world’s governments to agree to them. The rubbish that has been spouted by people who have never been in business about what will happen in the business world after Brexit is just incredible. Never mind ‘project fear’, the sheer level of ignorant guff that has come out of the mouths of politicians, so called experts and reporters (especially BBC so-called reporters) is almost unbelievable. If you listened to all that rubbish you’d think that business people were totally incompetent and couldn’t even wipe their arses without help instead of being, as they are, the drivers and the lynchpins of all successful economies. It’s not just ‘project fear’ it’s also ‘project piffle and guff’. Business goes on with or without politicians and their so called deals – just look at any war in history, or any disturbance of any kind. It’s always the businessmen and women who simply carry on and keep things working.
As I’ve often said: the only thing we have to fear is if the Remainiacs (on both sides of the channel) decide that they must cause problems in an attempt to sabotage Brexit, or to prove that they were right all along. I wouldn’t put it past the sort of people who have, all along, pushed the lies that make up ‘project fear’ to attempt to create mayhem, mischief and misery as some final, misguided act of revenge against the ‘deplorables’ who voted the ‘wrong way’ in the biggest vote with biggest majority in British history, and who obviously, in their opinion, think the wrong way as well.
New figures show British car manufacturing surged 8.5 percent in 2018, as the country is enjoying a slew of investments in research and new factories.
(By the way, the great global diesel crash is the main reason Nissan won’t make its X-Trail model in the UK, NOT the fears of a no-deal Brexit. Due to the stance taken against diesel by all European governments they wouldn’t be able to sell the vehicle here anyway.)
84,888 commercial vehicles rolled off British production lines in 2018, according to the latest figures released by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), as the market recovers from a slowdown in demand precipitated mainly by new diesel regulations.
Domestic demand rose by 17.9 percent, with an extra 5,248 units shifted, while exports increased by 2.9 percent to 50,320 units.
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), has meanwhile announced a massive investment programme, spending £444 million to establish 75 Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs).
The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) will contribute a further £2.2 million to the pot, while 1,400 industry partners will contribute £386 million in cash and in-kind support.
“The successful Centres will focus on cohort-based doctoral training and cover a wide range of fields, from Medical Imaging to Quantum Engineering, Offshore Renewable Energy to Statistical Applied Mathematics,” explained Professor Sir Ian Diamond, who will serve as Overall Chairman of the CDT panels.
Science and Innovation Minister Chris Skidmore said the investments were part of
“an increase of over £7 billion invested in R&D over five years to 2021/22 – the highest increase for over 40 years”,
as Britain seeks to support the
“skilled people [needed] to turn ideas into inventions that can have a positive impact on our daily lives.”
British manufacturing has also racked up a number of other successes in recent days, little remarked upon by the mainstream media, including a £1 million contract for Derbyshire-based overhead cranes & hoists manufacturer Street Crane, the announcement of a new Epwin Group factor employing 200 people in Telford, and Ginetta announcing an all-new supercar to be hand-built at a facility on the outskirts of Leeds, West Yorkshire, among many others.
Now consider briefly the following list of inward investments in the UK of some of the others, just some that announced this week:
£50 million Tata Steel Port Talbot upgrade
Brand new £8million pound factory in Scunthorpe for Bradbury
£2.7million new factory for Blake Envelopes in Yeovil
Currently uncosted but estimated at £13million new factory and at least 200 new jobs for Epwin in New Telford
£12million new factory in Essex for the Weston Group
£3.5million extension to Workwear Express’s Durham factory
£20million brand new faccility in Fife for 2Agriculture
and the list goes on and on and I can’t be bothered to type any more. Each week’s list is equally as long – just look at the Department’s weekly figures as they issue them online and at those for the last two and a half years. And a look at this site https://twitter.com/hashtag/ukmfg?src=hash (and following some of the links on it) will help anyone to start to get handle on the incredible successes of the last two and a half years – a period of phenomenal industrial growth for the UK that will continue after Brexit no matter what form it takes.
Thousands of business people and firms do NOT invest in a country that’s about to fail. Unlike the Remainiac publicity hounds of Project Fear people and firms in the business community are piling investment into the UK, as is the government. The economic upturn that we’ve been experiencing since the referendum result was declared isn’t going to stop any time soon. Every business person with the slightest grounding in reality knows that Britain freed from the failing economy of the EU will return to the rates of growth that the rest of the world, particularly the Commonwealth, has been enjoying for years.
Finally, I want to say one more thing: democracy, where the majority rules, is a good thing; but apparently populism, where the majority rules, is a bad thing. It seems to me that democracy becomes populism when the majority stop voting the way the left-liberal elite wants. I hope you can see what I’m driving at and I hope that you don’t fall for that sort of elitist propaganda.
The biggest threat to freedom and democracy in the UK is no longer the EU and its self appointed commissars and rubber stamp parliament (the EUSSR?) because we’re leaving that; but the last two and a half years have proved that the real threat now lies in the Palace of Westminster, in Whitehall, in Downing Street and at the BBC. They’ll keep, but there’s a reckoning coming at the ballot box, of that I’m sure.
This just in (and bear in mind what I said, above, about countries queuing up to get agreements with the UK):
The British government have just signed a new trade continuity agreement with Chile that “will see British businesses and consumers benefiting from preferential trading arrangements with Chile after we leave the European Union” according to the Department for International Trade.
The UK’s Ambassador to Chile, Jamie Bowden, signed the agreement a couple of weeks ago alongside Chile’s Foreign Minister Roberto Ampuero.?Bowden said that the agreement will ensure “there will be no disruption to UK-Chile trade as the UK leaves the EU”.
In an announcement on the government website, they explain that: “UK manufacturers benefit from preferential access to the Chilean market to sell their goods, and UK consumers benefit from lower prices on Chilean goods, such as wines, fruits and nuts and other products.?”
International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said: “Today we have signed an important trade continuity agreement as we prepare to leave the European Union. This will ensure there is no disruption to British business exporting to Chile after we leave the EU and will mean consumers continue to benefit from low prices and more choice on supermarket shelves.
“Our trading relationship with Chile continues to go from strength to strength, with exports rising over 20% to almost £1 billion last year. This free trade agreement will allow trade to continue as freely as it does currently and will help to strengthen our trading relationship even further.”
Interestingly, the government also say that “we expect to sign a number of other agreements due to be agreed in the coming weeks”.
Great stuff!
This follows the announcement in December that the UK and Switzerland had approved the implementing of a trade and banking agreement worth many billions (yes, billions with a ‘b’) of pounds – apparently worth over £17 billion in visible trade per annum and many more billions in invisibles.
The UK must leave the European Union, including the Single Market and Customs Union, so that the country is free to act independently on the world stage and realise the potential of Brexit.
One final point. Unless Parliament repeals the Act that it passed concerning Article 50 the UK MUST leave the EU at 11:00 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time on Friday the 29th of March 2019. There’s no option, for that is the law of the land. Time to get such a repeal through Parliament is rapidly running out – in fact, it’s now practically impossible.
Of course, one can never rule out the possibility of some sort of last minute jiggery-pokery by the Remainiac so-called elites in Parliament – including the Prime Minister.
Today in Parliament should be very interesting indeed!
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One Response
“You put your big butt in,
You put your big butt out,
you put your big butt in
and you shake it all about,
then you do the jiggery-pokery
and you turn yourself around,
that’s what it’s all about.”