Westminstenders: Operation Shock and Awe

[RedToothBrush]

The government is launching its get ready for the end of transition campaign which has been dubbed a 'shock and awe' campaign.

In this campaign we will learn all about what Brexit means and what amazing opportunities lie for having increased customs and borders, beaucracy and increased costs. Bet you are all really excited and looking forward to this.

We will also get a 'Farage Garage' in Kent to cope with these wonderful opportunities in traffic jams. This will be something that businesses throughout the country will be super excited to plan for in their socially distanced Zoom meetings or across warehouses with their face masks on. And banks will be delighted to see an uptick in applications in CCJs and debt reconstruction plans.

It will be a super fun time for the under 30s who have zero hours contracts, worked in retail or hospitality. Or should I say 'worked'.

Meanwhile the right to a jury trial has been binned due to 'long covid delays' which are shorter than they were several years ago. The NHS isn't getting the funding it expected, and waiting lists are longer than ever with no way to clear them. The plan to build more hospitals seems to have disappeared with the Nightingales. Many councils are about to go into insolvency and be taken over by accountancy firms. The civil service is being dismantled and conservative loyalists with no experience being put in charge of important functions of state. Communications with the press are being 'streamlined' to make them incredible of holding power to account and only able to repeat government public announcements.

Anyone looking forward to Christmas? When you write a letter to Santa remember to add 'visa application form', 'a sleeping bag for use at Dover', 'tinned tomatoes' and 'packets of seeds to grow your own' to the list.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-53416067
The Andrew Neil Show dropped as BBC News unveils cuts

Neil wasn't value for money in some respects and I don't always like him, but he did get to the heart of an issue better than a lot of others so I think this is a loss.

In total, 520 jobs will go, from a workforce of around 6,000 people.

That includes 450 job cuts that were announced as part of an £80m savings drive in January, and then put on hold.

Meanwhile, The Guardian has announced that it will cut 180 jobs, including 70 from editorial teams.

I'm concerned that drivers' App might be required to get permissions, timing, park places for the HGV

If so .... won't be pretty

I'm also expecting the App won't be ready on time and / or won't be fit for purpose

• probably no input from an HGV driver, just a MiniCummings who thinks he knows it all

The idea of a queueing app for drivers is so far beyond farcical that I cannot be bothered to pick holes in it.

The Customs Clearance regime changed from C16 to C88 in early 1988
The form has not changed since then
Agents at Heathrow and Southampton and Tilbury and every other airport and port has been using them day in day out

The problem is that the Government lied and lied and lied since June 2016 and has not made people get ready

Proof that its not new news
www.parcelforce.com/blog/focus-on-business/importing-goods-outside-eu
and again
www.parcelforce.com/blog/exporting/4-exporting-challenges-overcome
(both dated June 2016)

I'm concerned that drivers' App might be required to get permissions, timing, park places for the HGV

It will also have to be GDPR compliant. And we know HMG struggles with that. As indeed it struggles with most things.

Well, I say HMG, really it'll be a crony of Johnsons. G4S ? Serco ? Capita ?

It's also unlikely it'll run under iOS (remember the settled status "app" ?). So drivers (or their employers) will have to shell out on some new shiny handsets.

I'll put it out here that I reckon that average life of an Android handset for HGV drivers will be 10 days, reducing to 5 once the novelty has worn off.

(Memories of road testing "ruggedized" laptops for drivers, none of which proved up to the job ...).

This really is a "is this a book you'd want your wife or servants reading" example of how out of touch some in government are.

"The form has not changed since then"

But listening As I posted, some firms - especially smaller & medium sized - have never imported or exported outside the EU
So it is new for them

and it is definitely new for exporters, who will have to satisfy the EU import rules - or be seriously delayed or even just sent back

Some of these regulations and requirements for certification etc are different to non-EU countries
and the Uk firms will never have had to PROVE before - to the same degree as a 3rd country - that they satisfy them

Also, EU forms exporting to other members only have to satisfy common EU standards
whereas non-EU firms additionally require docs showing they satisfy the additional regs that each EU country may have.

Reportedly, there will be checks in the UK that drivers have the correct export documentation
so they won't be held up on the ferry / in Calais and worsen the queues.

Reportedly, there will be checks in the UK that drivers have the correct export documentation so they won't be held up on the ferry / in Calais and worsen the queues.
As per the Parcelforce Blog links from 2016 above
I really have very little sympathy for companies who have deliberately chosen not to inform themselves
yes, the Government has lied, but sensible companies will have at least
looked up the C88,
looked up the tariff codes and rates for their products
looked at what non EU importers do for clearance

Reportedly, there will be checks in the UK that drivers have the correct export documentation so they won't be held up on the ferry / in Calais and worsen the queues.

Will they be held up in Farage's Garage, or will there be an attempt to check their documentation is in order before they set off?

Quite aside from the usual SANFUs, the EUs system will have to cope with drivers with paperwork for one run that (either by accident or design) end up making a different one.

As always it's what's not being discussed that is more revealing.

In this case, what happens if a lorry with perishable goods has to dump them because the paperwork isn't in order and they cannot be delivered ? As in who will pay the loss ? Clearly not insurance. Clearly not the driver. Clearly not the haulier. So is this another money fountain from the government ?

The UKs version of "Where did that lorry go ?" will be "Where did that lorry come from ?" of course.

DGR
I've said since before the vote ....
many of the back loads to Southern Europe after bringing in food were barely profitable even with the single market.
With the costs and risks of a hard border, producers will simply choose to sell elsewhere
and European Lorry drivers will not bother with the UK run
so the shelves will empty

looked at what non EU importers do for clearance

What non-EU exporters do is largely irrelevant because the problem is with the ro-ro model, and the volumes of non-EU goods arriving by ro-ro ferries is negligible or even perhaps zero.

For big business I don't think that declarations are a problem per se, but the very limited timescales on which everything has to be prepared and processed. Versus airfreight the volumes are much larger and the ports aren't set up for non-EU trade (whereas airports are); versus shipping the issue is timescales (you have weeks or months to sort out any issues with the paperwork for a container that is en route).

Mistigri
The clearance paperwork process starts when the lorry loads up

eg with Spanish Lettuces
that gives a 24 hour window to have it all ready at the port
(the drivers do not choose their routes - each broker has a contract so the papers can be ready)

When the truck turns up at Calais the papers are checked and the French and English customs do their security tests

Trucks bound for France are already being visually and thermally checked on board by customs staff - the same should operate in both directions

On arrival in Dover the second half of the papers and any VAT And Duty is allocated to the importer's deferment account
(its how it worked fine before 1988)
and the lorry is on its way in a matter of minutes

With email and PDF it should be possible to make it run pretty smoothly
so long as the guidance is clear and decisive

The clearance paperwork process starts when the lorry loads up

I'd argue it starts now

When the fog lists and we can actually see the system, I'd advise people to watch out for any points where the agent involved has fuck-all incentive to make it work (i.e. anyone on the EU side). Because that will be the first pinch point.

We will probably have Raab telling us that he didn't realise the ferries were ro-ro.

We will probably have Raab telling us that he didn't realise the ferries were ro-ro.

Well considering that until last year he didn't know there was a stretch of water between England and France, I suspect he thinks that lorries "roll over" the road between Dover and Calais.

Red mentioned Andrew Neil, who is on of an rapidly dwindling number of BBC interviewers I have any time for. Seen way more of Jo Coburn during lockdown than usual and she’s impressed me a good deal but some of the others are dreadful. Stopped listening to “Today” (previously a ritual) years ago and the folks they have doing it on Newsnight are basically unwatchable.

Andrew Neil at least gets how you shred somebody live on air and quite often effectively voices the same level of contempt for our political representatives that I feel whenever I see him interviewing one.

Years ago I remember watching Lord Mandleson (who I have some weird type of respect for but politically can’t stand) absolutely destroying Andrew Marr (pre illness). I lost a shedload of respect for Marr that he allowed that to be done to him. Marr has generally removed well but still far too smooth and self satisfied (like many of his peers) Neil has got the chops.

Red mentioned Andrew Neil, who is on of an rapidly dwindling number of BBC interviewers I have any time for

I gave up with the BBC in Dec 2018. Or was it 2017. Either way, can't say I've got a "BBC News" shaped hole in my life. If they hadn't dumbed down so much, they'd have understood what a "Faustian pact" is before they made it.

Oh well, everything must change as Paul Youngadamus would have said if I hadn't just invented him.

Ah, the fog is clearing ..

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-53409521

The world is ill-prepared for the global crash in children being born which is set to have a "jaw-dropping" impact on societies, say researchers.

Falling fertility rates mean nearly every country could have shrinking populations by the end of the century.

And 23 nations - including Spain and Japan - are expected to see their populations halve by 2100.

(contd)

Who remembers "Die Hard". When the gloriously played Alan Rickman character says to his techie underling: "The circuits that could not be cut internally have been cut externally. You asked for a Christmas miracle and I give you the FBI ...."

Well in this case, the one thing that will scare the pants of anyone who has set their entire store predicated in capitalist expansion is the prospect of a shrinking labour force that means they have to up their wages (see also: feudalism and its collapse due to the Black Death).

We live in interesting times ....

DGR
The data set / pretty pictures behind that BBC story
vizhub.healthdata.org/population-forecast
Not that its news really - the population pyramids have been signalling it for the last 20 years

Not that its news really - the population pyramids have been signalling it for the last 20 years

I know it's a trend (axiomatically it had to be) but I confess being taken aback at the shortened timescale.

Tackling climate change is a little like the UK housing market. No amount of fiddling around with "help to buy" is going to magic up houses from nowhere. And no amount of plastic bag bans is going to change the fact we need fewer humans on the planet. A lot fewer.

By then I will be long dead, and my grandsons will be old men. I suppose they might well need to worry but not for a few years yet.

With email and PDF it should be possible to make it run pretty smoothly
so long as the guidance is clear and decisive

As long as the systems and staff are in place, and as long as exporters and transporters get everything right.

It seems to me that a lot of the headless chicken stuff is about preventing lorries turning up at the border with paperwork that contains errors or is incomplete, because once they are at the port the whole system is fucked. I've seen estimates that a pretty high % of declarations at the Swiss customs borders have errors. And there are no single market (regulatory) considerations at the Swiss border, only customs issues.

So the issue is not just filling in customs paperwork, and ensuring that any phytosanitary and animal product regs are complied with, but also complying with vehicle movement systems requirements.

So the issue is not just filling in customs paperwork, and ensuring that any phytosanitary and animal product regs are complied with, but also complying with vehicle movement systems requirements.

It's plate spinning.

Get ready for the next three word jamboree - Check Change Go

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/901013/FinallUKTTLaunchPartnershippToolkit1507.pdf

Jason
What a spectacular pile of piffle that link is.

Far More useful would be to have the ability to carry out Test C88s to be put through the validation checks
like the HMRC system lets you TEST FILE tax returns
That way traders could start to see which codes they actually need
get used to the forms
and HMRC could start to learn what errors are made

when C88s took over from C16 there was a three month parallel run
it was a PITA but it ironed out LOADS of the problems before the data was live

Oh Silly Me
That will never happen
because there are no contracts for consultants in that method