Westministenders: The Beginning of Negotiations

[RedToothBrush]

Transition has a few hours left.

Then negotiations start and trade stops.

Far from being over, there are huge numbers of issues that lay unresolved.

And businesses both now in the UK and EU will cease to trade with each other just because the red tape is such a pain.

So whilst people will celebrate and think things are 'done' that just shows how much people are paying attention.

It will be interesting to see people gradually realising what has been lost...

When they voted to Leave, a lot of people who knew virtually nothing about the EU and couldn't be bothered to research it decided that they knew better than every political party apart from UKIP and all the trade unions (if I remember correctly). In making that decision they took a massive risk, and in that sense deserve what they get.

Is Brexit the only even in human history where the losers have been told not to gloat?

I think it’s Ezekiel, iirc, in the Bible that contains religiously-expressed (in my view) statements of the political uncertainty of the times, from the point of view of a loser saying I told you so... (about the relative strength of Egypt versus whoever the Mesopotamian power was at the time) ... there’s certainly one in there. But of trivia!

Could be Jeremiah.

(It’s trivia 3000 years on, at least)

Re : Countries with internal Customs borders
India : Every state stops trucks and collects taxes on internal journeys. Modis Universal GST is a step away from it, but India is NOT a single market.

The USA : If you drive from Nevada to California, all commercial vehicles have to stop and pass CA phytosanitary checks (armed officers enforcing )

I'm pretty sure that parts of the former Soviet Union are the same
and China DEFINITELY has hard borders between some states

we are not as exceptional as we like to think

There is a phyto-sanitary border between Victoria and South Australia (and probably between other states too). Not plant products allowed to cross into SA - and even your boots/shoes need to be checked.

Well I spoke to a couple in Spain who had a boat based there, were planning on buying a villa there for their retirement to move to live permanently in Spain

These people aren't expats/immigrants though - they are British residents with a holiday home. I think a pro Brexit vote was much more common among the second home brigade than among genuine residents.

Like I said, I think leave votes by Brits actually resident in the EU were rare. Most people didn't/couldn't vote because they were disenfranchised by the 15 year rule or the big cockup on postal voting. (Everyone I know votes by proxy now, but that's a new development and a direct result of two cocked-up postal votes).

And keep reminding Leavers 'this is what you wanted'.

I can see what the article is getting at when it tells the losers not to gloat, but that immediately shows that Brexit hasn't started out as the rip roaring success we were told it would be. We haven't seen 'the easiest deals in history, done in an afternoon, because we hold all the cards.'

I'm not so sure the that Brexit "ex-pats" are mostly in Spain now. I've been shocked at how many British own holiday homes or have moved to work France to get work cleaning those holiday homes in recent years. We had a holiday in a small village in Limousin a few years ago - off the beaten track. The row of houses our cottage was in was, bar one, now entirely owned by non-French (mostly English but aware one was Irish. The last old Frenchwoman in the hamlet was furious). I saw that village on a later edition of A Place in the Sun because it's cheap. Tbf, one of the near-by farms was now being run by a Welsh farmer who'd left the UK (wisely).

But, we also stayed in a house in the SW. Lots of braying English voices at the local brocantes. I recognised one when she and another came to clean the house at the end of the stay. Middle-aged women, btw. Told us this is how they found work - bit of bar work and house cleaning. Could speak hardly any French. Easy enough to find them on the local area forums and to see that they were of the "they need us more than we need them" pov. I have wondered what they've done now.

This is an interesting example of changes people are seeing:

twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/1345154426978361344

I wonder how long HMRC are going to persist with the new VAT arrangements?

@prettybird

There is a phyto-sanitary border between Victoria and South Australia (and probably between other states too). Not plant products allowed to cross into SA - and even your boots/shoes need to be checked.

Yes, I think it's between all Aussie states. IIRC there are bins by the roads on state borders where you have to chuck any food/biological stuff.

These new VAT arrangements look unsustainable to me. But maybe I'm too optimistic.

I assume though that with the Aussie states, these have always been the rules, or at least rules for a long time. Not just rules which have been imposed while you are being told that it's all been made much easier.

On twitter Simon Bruni
@SimonBruni
·
20h
If Brexit were genuinely good for the country there would be no reason to tell people to pull together, move on or stop moaning. This kind of plea is an admission that it's a load of shite.

@wherearemychickens

This is an interesting example of changes people are seeing:

twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/1345154426978361344

I wonder how long HMRC are going to persist with the new VAT arrangements?

Tried to buy tins of goulash from Trier via eBay the other day to be informed not shipping to U.K. and eBay suggested I might have better luck if I edited my delivery address! I did think O yes, to where? Perhaps an address in Ireland so I could swim across and pick up the goods under cover of darkness...

Just putting that on here as I don't belong to Twitter. I found the comments there interesting though.

The US has different sales taxes (VAT). Just a quick look at a KPMG pages says this about overseas companies confirming the rules differ.

Does an overseas company need to appoint a fiscal representative?

Some states may require an overseas or out-of-state registrant to have a registered agent in the state to receive official notices such as service of process for legal action. The state may require a bond or deposit prior to issuing a sales tax permit to a foreign or out-of-state business.

home.kpmg/xx/en/home/insights/2018/10/united-states-indirect-tax-guide.html#:~:text=There%20is%20no%20national%20sales,from%201%20to%205%20percent.

And cba to read more details but this shows it's still a contentious area. "This is the result of 2018 US Supreme Court decision South Dakota v. Wayfair, which overruled an earlier court decision prohibiting states from imposing a sales tax collection obligation on a seller unless the seller had a “physical presence” in the state."

Border hopping for tax differences is RIFE in the USA.
New Hampshire liquor stores lined up along the Mass border are a sight to behold.

Yes the UK is unusual in adding a border where there was none before
but it is really just a relocated border (that is MUCH EASIER to manage than the old one)

I gather that the Channel and Irish sea ports are running pretty smoothly at the moment
BUT
that is in part because the level of stockpiling in December has allowed these two weeks to be low traffic while the system is tested
AND most of the UK is in COVID lockdown.

The Sunlit Uplands are not coming.
Those of us in the 48% need to keep up the pressure to incrementally reclaim losses
and not allow any more losses.

Andrew Locker of the National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations

Swedish: you'll see a lot of British people in France mainly because British people buy houses in the same areas that the British like to visit on holiday (often staying in holiday homes owned by and marketed to British people). It's a very circular economy which gives the impression of a much bigger British population than there really is.

In other words - there's a lot of clustering. And it's very local clustering. Where I live, in a fairly Brit-friendly (ie cheap, sunny) part of the country, there are towns and villages that are overrun with Brits and others (like the town where I live) where you almost never hear an English voice. I'd say it's one of the more popular destinations for less wealthy British immigrants but nevertheless my children have rarely had other English speakers in their classes (DS for 2 years at lycée, DD never).

On that Twitter thread about VAT on orders between the UK and EU, this response made me smile:
twitter.com/WeNeedEU/status/1345273742558171137?s=20

@Mistigri

Swedish: you'll see a lot of British people in France mainly because British people buy houses in the same areas that the British like to visit on holiday (often staying in holiday homes owned by and marketed to British people). It's a very circular economy which gives the impression of a much bigger British population than there really is.

In other words - there's a lot of clustering. And it's very local clustering. Where I live, in a fairly Brit-friendly (ie cheap, sunny) part of the country, there are towns and villages that are overrun with Brits and others (like the town where I live) where you almost never hear an English voice. I'd say it's one of the more popular destinations for less wealthy British immigrants but nevertheless my children have rarely had other English speakers in their classes (DS for 2 years at lycée, DD never).

Yes, that's true. By definition, I'm looking for holidays where there must be holiday homes.

How UK is viewed in NZ

Well that's a nice surprise. £1,000 in bitcoin - it was £200 last time I checked ages ago.

Not bad for the £10 I started with back in 201x

I wonder how all those people telling me how it would never take off feel now ?

(Personally it's more the blockchain I was interested in. It's telling how officialdom is trying hard to swerve a mechanism that is so hard to corrupt .... )

DGR
Is that a realised crystallised gain or just the price rising ?
I have a couple of FB friends who post about Bitcoin every hour
but things are only worth what you can sell them for - into a format where they become usable.

I agree that blockchains should be MUCH more widely used
but the carbon footprint of Bitcoin is horrific
and I suspect its a very frothy bubble

@RufustheSniggeringReindeer

I absolutely agree may

But it help with phrases like ‘leavers are ....or ‘remainers are .....

Or maybe it wouldn’t 🥺

It’s a bit clumsy to say remainers are 48% annoying me and leavers are 52% driving me to tear my hair out. Or my kids are giving me 63.2% of my grey hairs. But perhaps we should all do that on internet forums? Can’t quite see it happening tbh (Didn’t take me all day to come up with that, honest - “I’ve been out”.)