BREXIT - Is This Really Still Rumbling On? 😴
Comments
-
. It shows that behind the scenes conversations are still taking place and crucially. Britain has put forward suggestions.TheBigBean wrote:rjsterry wrote:TheBigBean wrote:rjsterry wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:DrHaggis wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:rjsterry wrote:I posted it more for the reference to a 'secret deal' than Peston's credentials. It occurs that it may be the cunning plan that various cabinet ministers are hinting at. As I said, I'm sceptical of Johnson's ability to pull it off, more so if his idea is just "let's just move the border posts either side of a 20mile wide strip of land. Ta-dah!".
As Boris's whole life has a been a triumph of presentation over substance is it not likely that his cunning plan is to re-present May's WA in a more upbeat manner?
I could buy this if Johson hadn't been busy burning that bridge since day 1. His rhetoric is making it impalatable for all involved to accept a compromise.
Trump school of negotiation - make outrageous claims/demands, pull back from the brink and claim victory.
The leaked idea of set back customs posts has been dismissed as out-of-date by Johnson this morning, but why it was ever put on paper when it's obvious that it wouldn't fly is anyone's guess. Peter Foster at the Telegraph reckons it *will* actually form part of formal proposals to EU.
With whom doesn't it fly?
Johnson, Dublin, EU, various informed commentators. Literally nobody supporting it.
Well, have a good laugh at me, but it looks like the start of a compromise to me.
In Ireland the situation is difficult, Sin fein for example have reiterated that ANY border physical or otherwise is not acceptable.
I have hope there will be compromise and an agreement though if there isn't it really can't be said that the EU were not the architects. We've put forward suggestions and proposals to deal with the backstop issue, to date the EU response has been sorry no. unless they are prepared to renegotiate that part of the treaty then the outcome will be no deal.
Fair enough.0 -
TailWindHome wrote:TailWindHome wrote:It occurs to me that the UK negotiating position on the backstop is so far away from what could be agreed that they aren't actually trying to replace the backstop.
They are using the 'backstop talks' as a proxy for 'no deal border arrangement talks' which the EU have said they won't get into.
Seeing as we are self quoting, from Sept last year.TheBigBean wrote:
My guess at the moment is that it will end with a sea border for agriculture and a land border for goods, but with smart technology. Both sides will call it a win.0 -
TheBigBean wrote:TailWindHome wrote:TailWindHome wrote:It occurs to me that the UK negotiating position on the backstop is so far away from what could be agreed that they aren't actually trying to replace the backstop.
They are using the 'backstop talks' as a proxy for 'no deal border arrangement talks' which the EU have said they won't get into.
Seeing as we are self quoting, from Sept last year.TheBigBean wrote:
My guess at the moment is that it will end with a sea border for agriculture and a land border for goods, but with smart technology. Both sides will call it a win.
The problem with that as a solution is that the technology doesn't exist.
It is noticeable how much has been said about customs specifically in the last week or so. Arlene Foster has been very specific on NI not being in a separate customs area.
I wouldn't be surprised if we ended up with an arrangement whereby NI was committed to the single market/regulatory alignment side of the backstop but with a whole UK commitment to stay in the Customs Union for x years. X being a long way down the road.“New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!0 -
If Parliament was still prorogued the Brexit Secretary wouldn't have to come to parliament today to explain WTF he's up to with the border.“New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!0
-
TailWindHome wrote:
The problem with that as a solution is that the technology doesn't exist.
It is noticeable how much has been said about customs specifically in the last week or so. Arlene Foster has been very specific on NI not being in a separate customs area.
I wouldn't be surprised if we ended up with an arrangement whereby NI was committed to the single market/regulatory alignment side of the backstop but with a whole UK commitment to stay in the Customs Union for x years. X being a long way down the road.
It depends what you want the technology to do, but if you are happy with a bit of light smuggling in cars, then it is not hard to have ANPR cameras that cross check vehicles over a certain size with customs declarations. There are already ANPR cameras on some border crossings, and they don't even need to be on the border.
Yes, the DUP has realised it has Irish cows.
I can't see the UK committing to stay in the customs union for a long time unless Labour win an election which seems unlikely.0 -
TailWindHome wrote:If Parliament was still prorogued the Brexit Secretary wouldn't have to come to parliament today to explain WTF he's up to with the border.
Well that is a positive development from the unproroguing. So far, I haven't seen much meaningful debate.0 -
TheBigBean wrote:rjsterry wrote:TheBigBean wrote:rjsterry wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:DrHaggis wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:rjsterry wrote:I posted it more for the reference to a 'secret deal' than Peston's credentials. It occurs that it may be the cunning plan that various cabinet ministers are hinting at. As I said, I'm sceptical of Johnson's ability to pull it off, more so if his idea is just "let's just move the border posts either side of a 20mile wide strip of land. Ta-dah!".
As Boris's whole life has a been a triumph of presentation over substance is it not likely that his cunning plan is to re-present May's WA in a more upbeat manner?
I could buy this if Johson hadn't been busy burning that bridge since day 1. His rhetoric is making it impalatable for all involved to accept a compromise.
Trump school of negotiation - make outrageous claims/demands, pull back from the brink and claim victory.
The leaked idea of set back customs posts has been dismissed as out-of-date by Johnson this morning, but why it was ever put on paper when it's obvious that it wouldn't fly is anyone's guess. Peter Foster at the Telegraph reckons it *will* actually form part of formal proposals to EU.
With whom doesn't it fly?
Johnson, Dublin, EU, various informed commentators. Literally nobody supporting it.
Well, have a good laugh at me, but it looks like the start of a compromise to me.
So you are in favour of another A50 extension then?Faster than a tent.......0 -
I've added a point to that. Let's hope there can be some compromise.Alejandrosdog wrote:
. It shows that behind the scenes conversations are still taking place and crucially. Britain has put forward suggestions.TheBigBean wrote:rjsterry wrote:TheBigBean wrote:rjsterry wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:DrHaggis wrote:Surrey Commuter wrote:rjsterry wrote:I posted it more for the reference to a 'secret deal' than Peston's credentials. It occurs that it may be the cunning plan that various cabinet ministers are hinting at. As I said, I'm sceptical of Johnson's ability to pull it off, more so if his idea is just "let's just move the border posts either side of a 20mile wide strip of land. Ta-dah!".
As Boris's whole life has a been a triumph of presentation over substance is it not likely that his cunning plan is to re-present May's WA in a more upbeat manner?
I could buy this if Johson hadn't been busy burning that bridge since day 1. His rhetoric is making it impalatable for all involved to accept a compromise.
Trump school of negotiation - make outrageous claims/demands, pull back from the brink and claim victory.
The leaked idea of set back customs posts has been dismissed as out-of-date by Johnson this morning, but why it was ever put on paper when it's obvious that it wouldn't fly is anyone's guess. Peter Foster at the Telegraph reckons it *will* actually form part of formal proposals to EU.
With whom doesn't it fly?
Johnson, Dublin, EU, various informed commentators. Literally nobody supporting it.
Well, have a good laugh at me, but it looks like the start of a compromise to me.
In Ireland the situation is difficult, Sin fein for example have reiterated that ANY border physical or otherwise is not acceptable.
I have hope there will be compromise and an agreement though if there isn't it really can't be said that the EU were not the architects. We've put forward suggestions and proposals to deal with the backstop issue, to date the EU response has been sorry no. unless they are prepared to renegotiate that part of the treaty then the outcome will be no deal and a hard border.
Fair enough.
TBH I'm getting tired of hearing about the Irish issue and can sympathise with the view of many of the UK electorate towards Brexit, which is in summary 'JFDI'."I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
TheBigBean wrote:It depends what you want the technology to do, but if you are happy with a bit of light smuggling in cars, then it is not hard to have ANPR cameras that cross check vehicles over a certain size with customs declarations. There are already ANPR cameras on some border crossings, and they don't even need to be on the border.
What actually would that achieve without a significant police presence (effectively a border patrol) to stop these vehicle?
And, OK, your size limit will effectively constrain mass sofa smuggling but what about, eg, diamonds? You can get a lot of diamonds in a Smart car. Valuable things don't need to be bulky.
It's quite simple - if we aren't in the Customs Union there has to be a hard border of some sort somewhere.
Typical Brexit approach - suggest a very vaguely sensible sounding solution to a difficult problem that on 10 seconds consideration is basically clearly twaddle. But you are doing no worse than Boris so pat yourself on the back for that one.Faster than a tent.......0 -
I suspect that part of the issue is having to deal with oportunistic Irish Nationalism.0
-
The Norway/Sweden border does not seem to run too badly without armies of Scandy police in warm clothing sat at checkpoints:Rolf F wrote:TheBigBean wrote:It depends what you want the technology to do, but if you are happy with a bit of light smuggling in cars, then it is not hard to have ANPR cameras that cross check vehicles over a certain size with customs declarations. There are already ANPR cameras on some border crossings, and they don't even need to be on the border.
What actually would that achieve without a significant police presence (effectively a border patrol) to stop these vehicle?
And, OK, your size limit will effectively constrain mass sofa smuggling but what about, eg, diamonds? You can get a lot of diamonds in a Smart car. Valuable things don't need to be bulky.
It's quite simple - if we aren't in the Customs Union there has to be a hard border of some sort somewhere.
Typical Brexit approach - suggest a very vaguely sensible sounding solution to a difficult problem that on 10 seconds consideration is basically clearly twaddle. But you are doing no worse than Boris so pat yourself on the back for that one.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41412561"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Just as well that no-one in NI has heard of fake number plates :?TheBigBean wrote:[it is not hard to have ANPR cameras that cross check vehicles over a certain size with customs declarations. There are already ANPR cameras on some border crossings, and they don't even need to be on the border.0 -
bompington wrote:
Just as well that no-one in NI has heard of fake number plates :?TheBigBean wrote:[it is not hard to have ANPR cameras that cross check vehicles over a certain size with customs declarations. There are already ANPR cameras on some border crossings, and they don't even need to be on the border.
You need to think that through.0 -
Do you think you might have a different opinion if you lived near the border, had been affected by the violence before the GFA, or if your livelihood depended on all-Ireland trade? Johnson's plan seems to rely on not enough people giving a sh1t about the issues it raises and the people it would affect.Stevo 666 wrote:TBH I'm getting tired of hearing about the Irish issue and can sympathise with the view of many of the UK electorate towards Brexit, which is in summary 'JFDI'.0 -
-
It should be noted that yesterday's kerfuffle on the solution to the border signified a significant movement from the UK gov and Brexiteers.
It was the first recognition that the UK will need UK customs posts on the UK side of the border.
"Who's going to build it?" is gone.“New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!0 -
Stevo 666 wrote:The Norway/Sweden border does not seem to run too badly without armies of Scandy police in warm clothing sat at checkpoints:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41412561
It does but there are armies of Scandy police but sat in a warm building so not needing warm clothes - but there's still a physical border as that article clearly states.I don't think there's any border in the world that's so smooth," says Kristen Hoiberget who runs the customs operation at Svinesund, one of a dozen border crossings that freight companies are allowed to use. He says the average waiting time is eight minutes.
The article states that in five years 70% of lorry drivers will cross without communicating to the customs officials. So even then 30% still will. I don't see how you can regard this model as complying with the "no hard border" requirement.For now, there is still plenty of paper to be processed, first with the customs agents, then at the customs office. At 3pm, a big crowd of drivers has built up. They take a ticket and wait to hand over their documents. A Swedish trucker grumbles to me that it can take an hour and a half, and he is unimpressed with the level of customer service
You really should have read the article; the content doesn't quite tally with the headline! We could no doubt do something more efficient learning from that model but I think it is still effectively a hard border. The efficiency of it is not really the point (nobody seems to be saying that an Ireland border should not be hard so that we can avoid queues).Faster than a tent.......0 -
TheBigBean wrote:[it is not hard to have ANPR cameras that cross check vehicles over a certain size with customs declarations. There are already ANPR cameras on some border crossings, and they don't even need to be on the border.
2017 just called. They want their failed ideas back...0 -
Stevo 666 wrote:The Norway/Sweden border does not seem to run too badly without armies of Scandy police in warm clothing sat at checkpoints:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41412561
Irish Border - 300 crossing points, 125,000 vehicles a day.
Swedish Border - 40 crossing points - 1300 lorries a day. 1300 staff.
So by my calculations we'd need about 125,000 border staff ?
But it's going to be the outrage of the people of Northern Ireland and Ireland that sink it. They aren't going to be happy about sitting in queues to nip into town.0 -
TheBigBean wrote:I can't see the UK committing to stay in the customs union for a long time unless Labour win an election which seems unlikely.
Unless the Tories get a sizeable majority the road to a deal goes through the labour party“New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!0 -
TailWindHome wrote:It should be noted that yesterday's kerfuffle on the solution to the border signified a significant movement from the UK gov and Brexiteers.
It was the first recognition that the UK will need UK customs posts on the UK side of the border.
"Who's going to build it?" is gone.
You didn't interpret it as follows: government contracts up for grabs => DUP softens its position0 -
TailWindHome wrote:TheBigBean wrote:I can't see the UK committing to stay in the customs union for a long time unless Labour win an election which seems unlikely.
Unless the Tories get a sizeable majority the road to a deal goes through the labour party
It's worth remembering that the only thing the current house agreed on was the Brady amendment. Not sure how many labour rebels that involved, but there are still probably the numbers for a sensible deal.0 -
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/02/ ... -a-border/
LSE blog: Long read: There is no such thing as completely frictionless trade across a borderThere are ways to move part of the border formalities inland, but in their current form they still require a border element. That could help to address delays in UK ports such as Dover, but this would not solve the Irish land border issue of avoiding all physical infrastructure at the border. Under any of the proposed Brexit scenarios, the UK will also be able to introduce unilateral simplifications of its own import customs procedures within the remit of international trade framework. It will not however, be able to influence what formalities are required by the EU and other countries. Therefore, imports from the UK will be subject to customs clearance requirements by the EU.
This seems to be the direction taken by HMRC when it comes to preparing for a no deal scenario and the recently published simplifications for importers. Importers would be able to provide minimal amount of information before the goods arrive at the border and defer submitting the full customs declaration. While there might be some relaxation in terms of physical and document border checks, these simplifications do not fully remove the need for customs formalities. For exports to the EU, UK traders would need to follow existing EU procedures.0 -
They also manage without, among other things: high walls between suburbs, helicopters constantly overhead, police officers who habitually check under their cars for bombs every time they get in them, and large, clever and ruthless criminal gangs straddling the border.Stevo 666 wrote:The Norway/Sweden border does not seem to run too badly without armies of Scandy police in warm clothing sat at checkpoints:0 -
What makes people think the camera infrastructure they propose won't be damaged by extremists on either side of the NI political spectrum? Then what?0
-
And so will the hard-bitten, ruthlessly criminal gangs who control the Irish border country. They're totally happy to murder people to keep their business/control going, they managed to keep going through all the years when the Irish border was heavily fortified, do you think a few ANPR cameras are going to be much of an obstacle?TheBigBean wrote:bompington wrote:
Just as well that no-one in NI has heard of fake number plates :?TheBigBean wrote:[it is not hard to have ANPR cameras that cross check vehicles over a certain size with customs declarations. There are already ANPR cameras on some border crossings, and they don't even need to be on the border.
You need to think that through.0 -
Quite possibly. Do you think that a fair few of the 99.something percent of people in the UK who are not on your list might see it differently? It may well be that not enough people do give a sh1t.briantrumpet wrote:
Do you think you might have a different opinion if you lived near the border, had been affected by the violence before the GFA, or if your livelihood depended on all-Ireland trade? Johnson's plan seems to rely on not enough people giving a sh1t about the issues it raises and the people it would affect.Stevo 666 wrote:TBH I'm getting tired of hearing about the Irish issue and can sympathise with the view of many of the UK electorate towards Brexit, which is in summary 'JFDI'."I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
bompington wrote:
And so will the hard-bitten, ruthlessly criminal gangs who control the Irish border country. They're totally happy to murder people to keep their business/control going, they managed to keep going through all the years when the Irish border was heavily fortified, do you think a few ANPR cameras are going to be much of an obstacle?TheBigBean wrote:bompington wrote:
Just as well that no-one in NI has heard of fake number plates :?TheBigBean wrote:[it is not hard to have ANPR cameras that cross check vehicles over a certain size with customs declarations. There are already ANPR cameras on some border crossings, and they don't even need to be on the border.
You need to think that through.
Alternatively, pay the hardened criminals to control the border and customs duties. This will provide a much greater deterrent to smuggling and convert a whole bunch of criminals from a life of lawlessness.
Easy.You can fool some of the people all of the time. Concentrate on those people.0 -
It's just something that shows what is possible/done elsewhere.Rolf F wrote:Stevo 666 wrote:The Norway/Sweden border does not seem to run too badly without armies of Scandy police in warm clothing sat at checkpoints:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41412561
It does but there are armies of Scandy police but sat in a warm building so not needing warm clothes - but there's still a physical border as that article clearly states.I don't think there's any border in the world that's so smooth," says Kristen Hoiberget who runs the customs operation at Svinesund, one of a dozen border crossings that freight companies are allowed to use. He says the average waiting time is eight minutes.
The article states that in five years 70% of lorry drivers will cross without communicating to the customs officials. So even then 30% still will. I don't see how you can regard this model as complying with the "no hard border" requirement.For now, there is still plenty of paper to be processed, first with the customs agents, then at the customs office. At 3pm, a big crowd of drivers has built up. They take a ticket and wait to hand over their documents. A Swedish trucker grumbles to me that it can take an hour and a half, and he is unimpressed with the level of customer service
You really should have read the article; the content doesn't quite tally with the headline! We could no doubt do something more efficient learning from that model but I think it is still effectively a hard border. The efficiency of it is not really the point (nobody seems to be saying that an Ireland border should not be hard so that we can avoid queues).
However if the EU reaction is similar to your reaction and that of a few others on here, we are headed for no deal and a hard border by default."I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Johnson's calculation might well be correct, but that doesn't by itself justify screwing up the lives of the considerable number of people whose lives would be severely adversely affected. Yet again, the UK would be the author of misery on the island of Ireland... I'd hoped we'd got past that.Stevo 666 wrote:
Quite possibly. Do you think that a fair few of the 99.something percent of people in the UK who are not on your list might see it differently? It may well be that not enough people do give a sh1t.briantrumpet wrote:
Do you think you might have a different opinion if you lived near the border, had been affected by the violence before the GFA, or if your livelihood depended on all-Ireland trade? Johnson's plan seems to rely on not enough people giving a sh1t about the issues it raises and the people it would affect.Stevo 666 wrote:TBH I'm getting tired of hearing about the Irish issue and can sympathise with the view of many of the UK electorate towards Brexit, which is in summary 'JFDI'.0
