[quote TheSunIsStillShining]@HistoryKitty
Could you please stop with this cutting off food supply chains on purpose bs?
There is a lot more shoreline: Belgium, NL, PO, DE or Spain, Portugal....
This is not the only way to bring freight. Yes, it is the most commonly used and most economic, but by closing this nobody is "starving" the UK.
The fact that the UK chose to rely so heavily on just one point of transport is not the EU or France's fault.
AGAIN: the UK had the opportunity to plan for any of the events that have happened this year and what will happen next year. They CHOSE NOT TO.
It's not the EU's or whoever else's fault that there is a new mutation, it was to be expected. They should have planned for it. The least they could have done is not do a big bang "+70% infectious" pressie, but actually forewarn the "partner" countries. They knew it for weeks now.
THEY CHOSE to do it this way. Either by design or stupidity. Or both.
I am sure that there are some out there who have made a killing off this in some form (although I can't think of a scenario, but should not underestimate their greed)[/quote]
I didn't say France had shut the supply line on purpose to starve us into submission over Brexit or something, they are responding to an emergency situation, hence stopping people travelling, which 40 countries have quite rightly done, but whether it was necessary to close off freight too is arguably not the best decision.
No its not the only way to bring in freight, but its the main route because Dover is the nearest point of land to mainland France. Do you know how much it costs to fuel a ship? Its not cheap. The further you have to move freight by sea the more it costs and the more expensive the product for the consumer. Its not really feasible to start using a port 200 to 300 miles further up the coast. We do have other ports, Essex for example, but that's mainly for freight from the Netherlands/Germany and passanger travel because its the shortest distance to those places by sea. France is the nearest and cheapest route for international trade so we mainly use that one as it wouldn't be financially viable to depend more heavily on the others.
It works both ways too, its cheaper for European countries, including France, to use the shorter sea route at Dover to trade with the UK and Ireland. It would cost them a lot more too if we started using other ports so its not really in anyones best interest.
That being said, you are correct that no one here is starving because of this but having 20% of our trade shut off overnight does have an impact on economies on both sides of the Channel and peoples livlihoods, not to mention stranding hundreds of lorry drivers. Arguably the UK is worse off but I doubt its much fun for the French businesses that rely on trade with the UK either.
The economies of other countries have also been hit badly in response to Covid, not just us. The UK should definately be looking at other ways of trading longer term, however its not that easy to just build a new port somewhere, which would take years, or start relying on air freight which is also not financially viable either.
As it stands, the UK discovered the mutation before other countries because we have good genome tracing facilities. As does Denmark, where the strain has also been detected. The countries with good testing facilities have detected this mutation, the countries where it hasn't been detected are the ones with poorer genetic testing. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the mutation is probably widely spread across Europe, but its only the countries with the ability to detect it who are reporting it. I get that Macron needs to look like he's doing something to keep the virus at bay and people movement should be limited, but what France's action to shut the ports to freight does do is send a message to other countries that being upfront about detecting mutations with the rest of the world is likely to come with some negative consequences. Doesn't really encourage sharing of information between countries.