Westministenders: Brexit Britain = Gridlock Britain ?

[BigChocFrenzy]

We keep getting told the Uk can get a deal like Canada, Turkey or other non-EU countries have, without FOM.
Those deals do not provide the same privileges as EU members:
They have quotas, restrictions and must obey EU regulations

e.g. After CETA, Ron Davidson, head of international trade for the Canadian Meat Council stated:
"We do not have what we would call commercially viable access to the European market".

The deal with Turkey abolished tariffs, but did not give free acess. This is what that means:

www.ft.com/content/b4458652-f42d-11e6-8758-6876151821a6

"On a recent Saturday at the Kapikule border crossing, about 30 minutes drive from the Turkish city of Edirne, a line of trucks 4km long stretched along the highway, inching along glacially towards the Bulgarian checkpoints.
"Today is a good day", said Ibrahim Kurtukcu, a 42-year trucker who had been waiting 14 hours.
"Last week the line was 7km long".
The record is 17km. It can take up to 30 hours to get through to the other side."

Of course, UK ports (and French ports) do not have the capacity, facilities, storage space or trained staff to handle customs processing of the vast amount of British exports & imports.

Building this additional capacity - where ? - would take several years and there are no signs that even the planning stage has started.

Wasn't the Fail on Sunday remain?

Yes it was.

Report of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee (summary, conclusions and recommendations and full report) available here
www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/foreign-affairs-committee/news-parliament-2015/article-50-report-publication-16-17/

Long opinion piece by Tom Kibasi is Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research and Chair of the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice in the Grauniad here
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/11/brexit-kibasi-ippr-article-50-referendum-remain-leave

semi It is a myth that the "chattering classes* have said racism is a wc phenomenon.

Firstly, many us us campaigning againts racism have, like me, been victims of it.
After decades of effort, we have got - we thought - the ruling clases to finally agree it is unacceptable and make laws against it.

We have repeatedly said racism is whipped up by the wealthy media owners and the right wing as a means of control and distraction.

Anti-racist campaigners repeatedly state that institutional racism is a big problem - and institutions like the police are not run by the less educated.

Education is advocated to counter racism, but that is for all sshools, from the private to the grammar to the comprehensive.
It is not about getting higher grades in A levels, but teaching people empathy.
It also means teaching the real history of the British Empire - schools don't cover that.

When we talk about racjsts being ignorant, we don't mean less educated in the sense of lacking a degree or A levels, but in lacking empathy and knowledge about their fellow human beings

There has always been a very nasty section of upper class racists on the Tory right, like those aristocrats in the 1930s who supported Oswald Mosey and flirted with Hitler.
They need to be stamped on, because they have the wealth and power to spread their poison

Exactly bigchoc.
The most racist - and therefore ignorant - people I've ever come across have been privately educated and quite rich!

The gp who assumed - because I was poor and half Irish - I would leave school at 15 and go wand work in a factory springs to mind.
The look on his gouty florid face when I said I was at college doing a levels!!!!

But isn't that exactly what's happened bogchoc?
Dacre and his ilk spreading their lies about immigration and terrorism and radical Islam.
And of course demonising the poor and most vulnerable in our society.
There are many many leave voters who voted leave in the strength if such headlines and lies. I wonder how they feel about their news source u turns?
It's really really depressing.
Maybe people really would rather put up with whatever is coming than admit they made a mistake?....
Human nature I guess...

There has always been a very nasty section of upper class racists on the Tory right, like those aristocrats in the 1930s who supported Oswald Mosey and flirted with Hitler.
They need to be stamped on, because they have the wealth and power to spread their poison

YY, not just the Tory right either, although they're probably more open about it - but yes to the ruling classes being stamped on.
As with most things, it is the culture of those at the top that sets the tone.

The Left were much more inclined to overlook Stalin's abuses, rather than Hitler's.
I would say the upper class racists are mostly right wingers.

The Daily Mail peddles its xenophobia to a mainly ABC1 readership, 2m of its 3.1m circulation. www.mailadvertising.co.uk/insight/industry-data/

Racism definitely resides across socio economic groups.

Bigchoc There is an irony that In London at least if you want your child to mix with pupils of different ethnicities and from different cultures then you will be more likely to find that in selective schools, both state and private. They are also the schools most likely to be teaching history from a non British white male perspective. In this area we have a road which has two very selective private schools next door to a community comprehensive in special measures. The comprehensive has few ethnic minorities whereas both private schools are much more diverse. 70% of pupils in The Grammar Schools that serve the area are BME (but 1% are FSM compared to nearer 20% in surrounding Comprehensives). The selective schools are not serving social mobility but they do help the mobility of different ethnic groups, mainly because of the importance placed on education in other cultures. .

Racism definitely resides across socio economic groups.

But it also, I think, varies across socio-economic groups. A lot of racism in deprived white communities in the UK occurs in areas where immigration is low - often it's simply a case that people have never had much opportunity to mix with people from other cultures. Anyone who watched the Guardian video that I posted yesterday will have seen a (non-UK) example of this: someone with a history of making racist statements on-line whose views were changed by the arrival of foreigners in his community.

I've seen this in real life plenty of times - my step father (working class Glasgow Jew) occasionally came out with things that were shocking to someone from my (London, multicultural) background - yet his behaviour towards real people never reflected this, he was the most generous and accepting man you could imagine.

My elderly French neighbour was the same - could come out with racist opinions while watching TV, yet when his 60-something sister arrived one day with her new Rastafarian boyfriend, he was welcomed like one of the family.

I'm not arguing that this sort of casual racism isn't damaging - it plainly is - but often it does not really reflect underlying social attitudes or moral convictions. It's more often directed at an imaginary, distant "other" than at real people (these are the people who say "I don't mean you" to their black friends). It's unthinking prejudice that comes from upbringing, lack of education and a relatively narrow life-experience - rather than reflecting a fundamental belief that some people are superior based on their skin colour and ethnic background.

White supremacists of the NF/EDF/Britain first variety are quite different, as their racism springs from firm underlying beliefs about racial superiority, and is often directly very specifically and sometimes violently towards real people. I'd argue that most middle and upper class racists have more in common with this second group than with the first group, but they are more dangerous because they are better at hiding racism behind an acceptable social veneer, and their ideas have more cultural and social impact.

www.richardcorbett.org.uk/brexit-immigration-squaring-circle/

An interesting comment on Brexit and immigration.

Agree Misti.

(Apart from our obvious polar opposite view re Brexit, I find myself agreeing with pretty much everything else you post btw!).

I think that description of the spread of BME pupils in schools might be very particular to your corner of London, ron. In my borough, there are definitely state primary schools that are "whiter" than other primary schools (although they tend to have a lot of different European nationalities) but, by secondary level, there is much more of a mix. We don't have grammar schools in our borough so can't comment on that but I live very near four private prep schools and I honestly don't think I have ever seen a BME pupil at one of these schools and very, very few at two of the others.

Well that all seems very sensible Tanith.

misti But isn't that Little England, who believe what they read in The Mail, and the very constituency that May takes as a mandate for her immigration policies (indeed that Cameron took for his policies and Gove for his education reforms - his nonsensical discriminatory reforms of the exam regulations for those with learning difficulties were entirely down to spin for the Daily Mail who were running a campaign to the effect that the Middle classes were buying extra time by paying for a diagnosis from an Ed Psych)

My MP who is pro immigration is still not signed up to rebel because she is being told that to not control immigration will cause huge unrest in the rest of the country. Although I really don't see the Brexit voting masses getting up from their chintz armchairs.....

Lala I am sure the Grammars skew things particularly here. I think Prep schools can be especially narrow minded, they tend to be non selective places to protect your Prince /Princess. However if you look at private secondary schools across London, whilst there are still some that serve that purpose, the most selective all make a particular point of having a diverse student body (they are also are inclusive of bright pupils with Learning Difficulties). If you want your child to grow up with racist attitudes do not send them to a selective private school. Of course one of the most diverse is Dulwich College, and look what they groomed

I am not standing up for selection, just pointing out that the reality does not entirely fit the stereotypes, and the irony of it.

"Wasn't the Fail on Sunday remain?"

And Rothermere was/is Remain but Dacre is the Leaver.

Little England protests?

My area is one of the highest in the country for leave vote by percentage. It's also one of the go to towns for tv when they want a 'we voted to get rid of immigrants' soundbite . It's a decent mix area of poverty through to affluence and these views are not being given just by the poorer or the richer, but across the board. We aren't a high immigration, but also not a low immigration area and have been for donkeys years so mixing hasn't helped there .

When challenged there's an awful lot of 'Steve the black dentist is ok so he can stay' or 'My cleaner is Romanian and wonderful so she's alright' and blame for lack of school places/Drs spots etc. All the typical DM/sun/express lines. However there isn't a big issue here for any of those things plus in my town alone there are thousands of home just been built and being built with no additional infrastructure. There's more additional white brits than additional forrin types.

Having said that my areas vocal distaste for forrin extends to Scottish and Irish so I suppose white brits doesn't help there!

More evidence for my thesis that the government has no intention of ending up on WTO terms. I recommend reading this in full:

leavehq.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=128

But the moment we leave the EU, this stops. Your component manufacturer may still comply with exactly the same standards, but the testing houses and the regulatory agencies are no longer recognised. The consignment has no valid paperwork. And, without it, it must be subject to border checks, visual inspection and physical testing.

What that means in practice is that the customs inspector detains your shipment and takes samples to send to an approved testing house (one for the inspector, one for the office pool, one for the stevedores and one for the lab is often the case). Your container inspection is typically about £700 and detention costs about £80 a day for the ten days or so it will take to get your results back. Add the testing fee and you’re paying an extra £2,000 to deliver a container into the EU.

Apart from the costs, the delays are highly damaging. Many European industries have highly integrated supply chains, relying on components shipped from multiple countries right across Europe, working to a “just in time” regime. If even a small number of consignments are delayed, the whole system starts to snarl up.

Then, as European ports start having to deal with the unexpected burden of thousands of inspections, and a backlog of testing as a huge range of products sit at the ports awaiting results, the system will grind to a halt. It won’t just slow down. It will stop. Trucks waiting to cross the Channel at Dover will be backed up the motorway all the way to London.

Quite an old article btw, now doing the rounds on Twitter. I don't believe that if the Leave campaign knew this over a year ago, that the government doesn't know it now.

Much of the select committee evidence collecting is, IMO, an act of political theatre aimed at informing the batshit leavers in parliament. This whole grotesque political charade is not about brexit at all; it's about how to end up in an EEA/EFTA relationship with the EU without splitting the Tory party in two.

I do wonder, btw, whether the whole "no vote on the deal for parliament" position is really about hobbling any attempt by the Tory party loony wing to vote down what will inevitably be a rather unsatisfactory (for hardcore brexiters) deal.

Misti very interesting, I have been wondering where all this political theatre is going...