[kreuzberger]

Minette Batters isn’t short of trade PR hyperbole but if she’s right it won’t be long before something very nasty slips into the supply chain to keep prices keen. And if fatalities result from supermarket meat instead of a low rent butcher, trust between the citizen and government collapses.

The audience for the 5:30 am Farming Today must be vanishingly small but both @Youngian and I catch many an episode. Batters and many a farmer have an unrivalled platform . It's a pity that the flagship news programme, just moments later, is deaf to the content.

This agricultural and foods standards clusterfuck has been on the radar for years. It appears now to be unavoidable, for really shit or for worse - not much to chow down on upon the moist island except for the Romanian pangolin sausage or whatever slides in across the open borders.

Still, "don't look up".

[Youngian]

Farmers Weekly is also a gold plate trade publication that has something for Defra scientists and a hill farmer in Cumbria. Remarkable as few farmers have any interest in getting involved in the media. Clarkson’s Farm has raised a few eyebrows among country folk as farmers have always gone around with a bit of straw in their mouths claiming they’re hard-up. But they are facing unprecedented shit from all directions.

[Youngian]

Haven’t even seen Farage interrupt his Dambuster airfield saving activities to praise the CPTPP. This turkey has no economic or even Brexiter culture benefits as well as an intellectual conundrum for Brexit’s brainbox sovereignty fetishists.
There’s also loads of Google pics of barbecued dogs in Vietnam.

[Bones McCoy]

Meanwhile Easter getaway delays at Dover.

Dover delays as ferry passengers wait for hours

Up to fourteen hours.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65143093

[Malcolm Armsteen]

No sign of the B-word...

Elphick is just blaming the awkward French, so nothing to do with Lord Frosty of Frostville turning down easier border controls when they were offered by - the awkward French...

[Oboogie]

"Responding to the claims of lengthy delays in border checks on Saturday, officials in northern France said there were "no difficulties that we know of", but that lots of coaches had arrived to travel at around the same time.

All border checkpoints were operational and border police had changed some car checkpoints into slots for coaches, they added.

"Simon Calder, travel correspondent at the Independent, said processing times since leaving the EU had increased sharply "and that would seem to explain the delays".

An EU border at Dover meant things were "gumming up", as each individual passport had to be inspected and stamped after Brexit, he told the BBC.

Delays have been compounded by coachloads of passengers needing to disembark to have their passports checked.

Asked whether the port delays were a result of Brexit, Labour's Ms Nandy said: "The point is not whether we left the European Union or not... the point was that we left with a government that made big promises and once again didn't deliver."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65151700

[Youngian]

20th century border guards in peaked caps checking passports is performative art for Brexiters. You can cross reference everyone from passenger lists and take a closer look during the voyage of those flagged up. Or could but the UK decided it didn’t want to share data access with the EU. Sovereignty and all that.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Brexit overall is performative politics.

Can you imagine what it will be like next year when everyone has to be fingerprinted and eyechecked?

[Bones McCoy]

[Youngian]

JIT production can now be duplicated in Asia Pacific based factories. Haven’t encountered this hack before who describes herself as a ‘free market economist.’ If you want to bolster academic credibility just call yourself an economist not a something, something economist.

[Andy McDandy]

Asia/Pacific invented JIT, and this looks suspiciously like sticking goods in a warehouse to "add value". Why export goods from, say, Australia to the UK, just to be "finished" and sent back to Australia?

This looks very much like the colonials' revenge.

[Youngian]

Chucking out time at the Brexit Arms. ‘I don’t need any of ya, I’ll take you all on.’

[Bones McCoy]

The warmest driest day of the year so far.

Let's appreciate the view of those sunlit uplands

[Youngian]

Confident Telegraph hack Liam Halligan cast himself as a cerebral Brexiter unconcerned with trivialities about foreigners speaking on trains. It was tough at the time convincing the average Jo just how much horseshit the likes of Halligan spouted but now I don’t need to.

The Upsides Of Brexit That No One Ever Hears On The Media
1 February 2018
Economics expert Liam Halligan dismissed the gloomy Brexit forecasts by listing out the upsides of Brexit that are never reported.

But Mr Halligan labelled economics as worse than astrology when it comes to predicting the future as he talked up some of the positives of leaving the EU.
Speaking to Nick Ferrari, he said: "We never hear about the upsides of Brexit.

"Like the fact that outside the Customs Union, food, clothing and footwear will be much, much cheaper, about 20% cheaper.

"That particularly benefits the poorer households in society.

"We never hear about the fact that we can do much better trade deals if we are just the UK, the fifth largest economy, because those trade deals can focus on services.

"The European trade deals never focussed on these, because it didn't suit the French and Germans. https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/ ... ars-about/

EU is still building on the world’s most sophisticated integrated services market because, like the UK, its members (including France and Germany) are predominantly a high end services economy, you fucking dildo.

[Yug]

"Like the fact that outside the Customs Union, food, clothing and footwear will be much, much cheaper, about 20% cheaper.

I'm not sure where Halligan lives, but in this reality food, clothing and footwear have all gone up in price.

More "jam tomorrow" bollocks.

[Youngian]

There were zero tariffs on goods from the world’s 50 poorest countries to the EU and pretty sure the UK has rolled the agreement over. The EU’s WTO tariffs (also rolled over) on goods are negligible with shoes slightly higher (7%). It’s a residual hangover from an Italian Thatcher handbag moment in the 80s to protect their proud footwear industry.
But most importantly, any nation that bets the house on drivel from the likes of Halligan, get its currency marked down so import prices rise.

[Youngian]

Maths man Sunak has delivered stagflation to an economy that didn’t even have inflationary growth rates.

[Youngian]

Not proper Brexit, not my fault blah blah. It’s a pleasure watching these grifters squirm.

[Watchman]

Not sure were this sits with Sunak's hi-tech love in

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ision-deal

[Youngian]

Not sure were this sits with Sunak's hi-tech love in

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ision-deal

Pretty well as Microsoft are talking horse shit and having a hissy fit as they couldn’t get their hands on monopolising a market (which they’ve had their knuckles wrapped before by the EU and US on a grand scale). And this is a fanciful proposition that Brussels regulators are less independent from elected politicians than the UK

The tech boss claimed he expected Brussels to approve the deal, saying its regulators were far more interested in having conversations and finding “solutions rather than reasons to block people from moving forward”. He also criticised the fact that the bosses of UK regulators were largely independent, calling them “unaccountable”.

Quite

Despite Smith’s claim that the UK would find itself an outlier, other regulators in the US and EU have voiced concerns about the merger.