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Crisis Management: EU-style – politicalbetting.com

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  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,992

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    Oh and Philip, here's that random bloke off twitter with FBPE in his handle spouting off about wine.

    What (tf) does he know, right?

    https://www.daniellambert.wine/
    We'll see.

    If it is "impossible" to buy EU wine after April then I am willing to make a £100 bet.

    I challenge anyone to pick a date* this year and I will go to my local supermarket or bottle store and look for a bottle of EU wine. If I can go to a bottle store or supermarket and pick up a bottle of EU wine then I'm happy to put a photograph of the bottle and my receipt here and you pay me £100. If I am incapable of finding any EU wines then I will pay you £100.

    Any takers? If I don't know what I'm talking about and it really is "impossible" to import wine after April, as opposed to a bit more inconvenient, then that should be guaranteed money in your pocket straight from a mug apparently. Who wants in?

    * Not Easter Sunday or Christmas Day, don't be a smartarse.
    You're not quite getting this whole thing are you?

    Of course it will be possible but choice will likely be diminished and prices likely higher.

    A poster-child Brexit success story.
    Thank you.

    I was arguing against the specific use of the word "impossible". "Of course it will be possible" means I was right.

    Thank you for agreeing with me.
    Well I'm sure that some suppliers may find it impossible.
    Don't they go into collective buying with other small suppliers though? It's not rocket science to split the fixed cost of paperwork over a larger order.
    If it becomes more competitive to buy larger containments instead of smaller ones then that's an adaptation not an impossibility.
    LOL you _really_ don't know how the wine trade (at the smaller end, for people such as Daniel Lambert) operates do you?

    Look it's no shame, you have to keep up with expertise on so many other sectors you can be forgiven for being absolutely pig ignorant on this one.
  • TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    Oh and Philip, here's that random bloke off twitter with FBPE in his handle spouting off about wine.

    What (tf) does he know, right?

    https://www.daniellambert.wine/
    We'll see.

    If it is "impossible" to buy EU wine after April then I am willing to make a £100 bet.

    I challenge anyone to pick a date this year and I will go to my local supermarket or bottle store and look for a bottle of EU wine. If I can go to a bottle store or supermarket and pick up a bottle of EU wine then I'm happy to put a photograph of the bottle and my receipt here and you pay me £100. If I am incapable of finding any EU wines then I will pay you £100.

    Any takers? If I don't know what I'm talking about and it really is "impossible" to import wine after April, as opposed to a bit more inconvenient, then that should be guaranteed money in your pocket straight from a mug apparently. Who wants in?
    I do enjoy your strawman arguments deployed once you've pillocked yourself into a corner.
    No straw man. You said "impossible". I defined "impossible".

    Do you have some other definition of "impossible"? Do you know what the word "impossible" means?
    To answer my own question above. I said "its impossible to replace wine that doesn't exist." As in replace the 50% of wine from the EU with the other 50% as the volume doesn't exist.

    Quite how that has been changed to "impossible to import from the EU" is something that only Philip can understand.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868
    Pagan2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    For rereference from the eurostat website to save people clicking

    In 2019, the sold production of wine (including sparkling wine, port and grape must) in the EU was around 16 billion (bn) litres. The largest wine producers were Italy, Spain and France, followed by Portugal, Germany and Hungary.

    Mr Pioneers has france alone doing 3 times the total for the EU so something dodgy somewhere

    I'd stop digging, if I were you.

    Being able to stand back from some data and quickly see that it is self evidently wrong is a useful skill - one that from my time in business I found isn't as common as you might hope. There's really no point in quibbling over details if your conclusion so obviously contains a gross error.
    So which bit of the eu producing 16 billion are you disputing....that website I beleive is the official eu one
    For god's sake, man, just stand back and look at the dumb statistic you have produced. It's obviously wrong.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 9,877
    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:



    The total production of wine in 2018 for the whole world was 292 million hecto litres or 292 billion litres.
    The eu produced last year 14 billion litres of wine.....the idea that the rest of the world doesnt produce enough wine to to replace the 4 billion litres we import is ....odd

    Some odd numbers being quoted there. France Italy and Spain combined produce nearly half of the world's total output.

    See my reply to IanB2...now you can tell me why there figures are wrong but I am arguing from figures out there and they certainly dont show the eu being half of world production and the figures you quote are already far higher that an official ec source
    Perhaps you are looking at the numbers for mead?

    https://lmgtfy.app/?q=wine+production+by+country+2020
    I quote my source for eu wine which is an ec.europa/eurostat source
    Looking at that link it says that France/Italy/Spain each produce 3-5m litres/year. That accords with global production.

    Not sure what that link shows in your support.
    I asserted that total eu production was circa 14 billion...that link shows 16 billion....not an order of magnitude out
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 37,376
    To be fair to the wine merchants, these changes are insignificant if you're importing in huge quantities. But, if say, you're importing 50 cases a year from a specific vineyard, then it must be a real headache. You might have fifty customers who particularly enjoy that particular wine, and offering them something else just loses you those customers.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 8,754

    Excellent article @Cyclefree, thank-you once again. Vaccination has clearly been a big success story for the UK; the EU appears to have blundered spectacularly.

    That, at least is how it looks from the UK - it would be good to have the perspective of non-UK posters, especially EU-based PB posters.

    Certainly looks like it doesn't it. I suspect that having several manufacturers closely associated with the UK, a nimble and expert regulatory system and an NHS where everybody, more or less, is easily contactable from somewhere they recognise and, generally speaking, trust has helped considerably.
    However, as we get further down the age ranges we will find a lot fewer people actually registered with a nearby surgery and things might start getting a bit more difficult.
    That's a fair point. I was registered with my university surgery in the West Midlands (I assume, I didn't register elsewhere) for the three years I worked in South Wales - got my act together and registered locally since then. Would have been a bit inconvenient getting an invitation to have my vaccination in W Midlands while living in Wales! Easily fixed by re-registering of course, but the W Midlands surgery probably didn't even have my contact details - mobile, maybe.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,398
    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    Oh and Philip, here's that random bloke off twitter with FBPE in his handle spouting off about wine.

    What (tf) does he know, right?

    https://www.daniellambert.wine/
    We'll see.

    If it is "impossible" to buy EU wine after April then I am willing to make a £100 bet.

    I challenge anyone to pick a date* this year and I will go to my local supermarket or bottle store and look for a bottle of EU wine. If I can go to a bottle store or supermarket and pick up a bottle of EU wine then I'm happy to put a photograph of the bottle and my receipt here and you pay me £100. If I am incapable of finding any EU wines then I will pay you £100.

    Any takers? If I don't know what I'm talking about and it really is "impossible" to import wine after April, as opposed to a bit more inconvenient, then that should be guaranteed money in your pocket straight from a mug apparently. Who wants in?

    * Not Easter Sunday or Christmas Day, don't be a smartarse.
    You're not quite getting this whole thing are you?

    Of course it will be possible but choice will likely be diminished and prices likely higher.

    A poster-child Brexit success story.
    Thank you.

    I was arguing against the specific use of the word "impossible". "Of course it will be possible" means I was right.

    Thank you for agreeing with me.
    Well I'm sure that some suppliers may find it impossible.
    Don't they go into collective buying with other small suppliers though? It's not rocket science to split the fixed cost of paperwork over a larger order.
    Maybe. I worked in the wine trade for a bit many years ago, although didn't get too involved with the logisitics. Generally (but not always) each wine merchant has a set of relationships with a set of growers. Pallets or parcels become available at different times. As with anything, it is more difficult to coordinate with a third party (ie your competitor) to act on such events.

    Certainly not impossible (hi @Phil) but definitely a shag.
    For sure there will be a short term increase in complexity of orders but I doubt it's fatal.

    My issue is that there's been no reasonable adjustment period. We should have got a deal implementation period so that companies could adjust, that's where a lot of these problems we coming from, it happened overnight.
    And even now if you try and find someone to help you HMRC turn round and say sorry beyond our level of expertise.

    And that's if you are lucky enough to find someone with time to answer the call as they are dealing with others with the same issues.
  • TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    Oh and Philip, here's that random bloke off twitter with FBPE in his handle spouting off about wine.

    What (tf) does he know, right?

    https://www.daniellambert.wine/
    We'll see.

    If it is "impossible" to buy EU wine after April then I am willing to make a £100 bet.

    I challenge anyone to pick a date* this year and I will go to my local supermarket or bottle store and look for a bottle of EU wine. If I can go to a bottle store or supermarket and pick up a bottle of EU wine then I'm happy to put a photograph of the bottle and my receipt here and you pay me £100. If I am incapable of finding any EU wines then I will pay you £100.

    Any takers? If I don't know what I'm talking about and it really is "impossible" to import wine after April, as opposed to a bit more inconvenient, then that should be guaranteed money in your pocket straight from a mug apparently. Who wants in?

    * Not Easter Sunday or Christmas Day, don't be a smartarse.
    You're not quite getting this whole thing are you?

    Of course it will be possible but choice will likely be diminished and prices likely higher.

    A poster-child Brexit success story.
    Thank you.

    I was arguing against the specific use of the word "impossible". "Of course it will be possible" means I was right.

    Thank you for agreeing with me.
    Well I'm sure that some suppliers may find it impossible.
    Again impossible and harder are too very different things.

    Impossible literally means not possible.
    "...while staying in business."

    Of course it literally possible to buy a case of wine for £100 and sell it for £80.

    You're struggling here.
    That's supply and demand. So either pay less than £80 (inc all costs) for the case, or charge over £100. Neither are 100% impossible.

    Incidentally for what its worth I do have experience of trading wine by the pallet load. A pallet of wine (bottled) has thousands of bottles of wine in the pallet. A HGV can have 24 pallets of bottled wine in a consignment, which could theoretically all be the same type.

    Unless import paperwork is in the hundreds of thousands pounds then it is entirely possible to do import paperwork very cheaply per bottle. That's bottled not vats of wine.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,992
    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    The correct price of anything is the price someone is willing to pay for it.

    If the price of importing is higher than many consumers are willing to pay for it, the economics of businesses importing them is no longer viable. Its *possible* to import at a price that not enough consumers are prepared to pay. So it doesn't get imported.

    I can sketch this with crayons if you like. Its called "adding". The ape-men of the Indus understand this, you and Baldrick apparently do not.
    Are you trying to explain the concept of Supply and Demand to me? After I already mentioned it? 🤔

    It may be possible to set an import price that no imports will happen. That's not going to happen though.

    What may happen is that there is a marginal price change, so some things will be marginally more expensive, which means marginally less trade. That is supply and demand, that is not an impossibility to trade though.
    £1.50 for paperwork on a £7 bottle of wine isn't marginal. Heck even on a £15 bottle of wine that isn't marginal.
    You can get New World bottles of wine for £4 (£3.33+VAT) in the supermarket.

    Are you suggesting that 50% of the price of the wine is the paperwork. Or is it possible to do the paperwork for less than £1.50 per bottle - eg if you buy a large shipment instead of a small one?
    I thought you were an expert on wine?

    The reality is that most New World wine now is shipped in tanks and bottled in the UK...

    Those tanks are of course already used 24/7 365 days of the year so are not immediately available for new imports.
    Yes, that's surely the kind of innovation we'll see for EU wines as well, it's better for the environment too as you're no longer transporting heavy glass bottles by truck.

    I think the government made a huge mistake in not having a 12 month deal implementation period where businesses had time to digest the new rules and switch to new import and export methods over the year.
    LOL x2.

    "Shipped in tanks and bottled in the UK"?

    For the wine sold by small, independent wine merchants?

    Dear god Max don't jump on this bandwagon.
  • tlg86 said:
    It would be good for Starmer to do that on behalf of all the Labour party
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 9,877
    IanB2 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Pagan2 said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Yep, difficult to disagree with any of that.

    I do wonder, however, if it is just possible that those who were so convinced that the EU were the adults, the reasonable ones whose views and positions should be given unstinting respect and deference through the long and tedious Brexit saga are taking the opportunity to reflect. It turns out that the EU is not an institution of laws after all. It is a bureaucratic mess, slow and incompetent, with a massive democratic deficit who cannot be relied upon to respect the views of its members (in this case Ireland and Art 16).

    Thank the lord we are out of it. Now let's move on together and make the best of our own path.

    As I keep pointing out, there is a world of difference between the EU pooing the bed over their vaccine fiasco and the EU stating a core negotiating position that the UK refused to accept. Nor are the EU the reason why we have chosen to leave the EEA. From the EU's self-imposed idiocy to our own - a wine importer whose business cannot function under the rules the UK government demanded be imposed.

    Some of the responses are quite funny as well. "Can't you import wine from elsewhere?" No - it doesn't exist. ROW doesn't produce anywhere near enough wine to replace EU volume. Err, "they need our customs. can't the frogs tell Macron to change his rules?" No, these are our rules. Insisted on by the UK government.

    https://twitter.com/DanielLambert29/status/1355437505642975233
    Your constant posting of anti brexit stories is rather pointless even more so after these last few days

    We are not going back so business will have to adapt
    I think we know that. The actual issue at the moment (if you read the tweets) is the paperwork requirements are making low volume imports impossible.

    Importing a container with a single product on it not a problem - 1 set of paperwork required.
    Start importing different product within a single container and the problems start to occur - as you need 1 set of paperwork per product and any 1 mistake on single form is enough to block the whole container from moving.
    Start splitting pallets into smaller orders and real problems begin. Remember 1 mistake blocks the entire container

    We've spent 30+ years with paperwork free exports and imports from the EU. The introduction of paperwork (a lot of which HMRC have zero people who understand it) is making things impossible. And Covid is sweeping this under the table.

    Now things will get easier - but they will get easier by people reducing the products they import and export - so less paperwork is required and less paperwork is the only way to avoid mistakes occurring.
    So people will adjust. That's not impossible.

    If people don't want to adjust, especially people with EU flags in their Twitter handle, that's on them not politics.

    The idea it is "impossible" to import wines from outside of a customs union would be a strange thought to anyone who likes New World wines.
    Thanks for again demonstrating your ignorance on the subject. I am not remotely interested in wine, but I was interested in the response to someone else who made the same point you did. The production volume of New World wine cannot possibly replace the volume lost from not being able to import viably from the EEA - the wine simply doesn't exist in anywhere near sufficient volume to be imported as a replacement.

    So yes, its impossible to replace wine that doesn't exist.
    The total production of wine in 2018 for the whole world was 292 million hecto litres or 292 billion litres.
    The eu produced last year 14 billion litres of wine.....the idea that the rest of the world doesnt produce enough wine to to replace the 4 billion litres we import is ....odd
    I think you are out by a factor of 10 on the meaning of hectolitre.
    Lo! And so a clever PB'er spots his gross error.

    A very useful behaviour to adopt - and to encourage in others - is, before doing any calculation, take a rough guess as to what the answer might be. It'll prevent those embarrassments where you cock up an Excel formula and come up with a dumb answer, which you share with others because it came out of the computer and so must be true.

    In the long run it'll also make you better at guessing.
    a hecto litre is 100 litres yes? so a figure of 292 million hectolitres - 292,000,000 x 100 ah yes 29.2 doh its early
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,992
    Sean_F said:

    To be fair to the wine merchants, these changes are insignificant if you're importing in huge quantities. But, if say, you're importing 50 cases a year from a specific vineyard, then it must be a real headache. You might have fifty customers who particularly enjoy that particular wine, and offering them something else just loses you those customers.

    Bingo!
  • Floater said:
    President Trump's son-in-law winning a Nobel Prize will not please The Donald. It should have been his.

    Tbh I'd have awarded Trump the Nobel Peace Prize just for sacking Neocon warmonger John Bolton.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,865
    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    The correct price of anything is the price someone is willing to pay for it.

    If the price of importing is higher than many consumers are willing to pay for it, the economics of businesses importing them is no longer viable. Its *possible* to import at a price that not enough consumers are prepared to pay. So it doesn't get imported.

    I can sketch this with crayons if you like. Its called "adding". The ape-men of the Indus understand this, you and Baldrick apparently do not.
    Are you trying to explain the concept of Supply and Demand to me? After I already mentioned it? 🤔

    It may be possible to set an import price that no imports will happen. That's not going to happen though.

    What may happen is that there is a marginal price change, so some things will be marginally more expensive, which means marginally less trade. That is supply and demand, that is not an impossibility to trade though.
    £1.50 for paperwork on a £7 bottle of wine isn't marginal. Heck even on a £15 bottle of wine that isn't marginal.
    You can get New World bottles of wine for £4 (£3.33+VAT) in the supermarket.

    Are you suggesting that 50% of the price of the wine is the paperwork. Or is it possible to do the paperwork for less than £1.50 per bottle - eg if you buy a large shipment instead of a small one?
    I thought you were an expert on wine?

    The reality is that most New World wine now is shipped in tanks and bottled in the UK...

    Those tanks are of course already used 24/7 365 days of the year so are not immediately available for new imports.
    Yes, that's surely the kind of innovation we'll see for EU wines as well, it's better for the environment too as you're no longer transporting heavy glass bottles by truck.

    I think the government made a huge mistake in not having a 12 month deal implementation period where businesses had time to digest the new rules and switch to new import and export methods over the year.
    Which is great on one level but does mean that small vineyards with limited supplies (i.e. the products the wine importer currently sells) will continue to be a red tape paperwork nightmare.
    I'm not sure that it does, if a small producer is selling 10,000 litres in the UK then I'm sure they can get a tanker to take it across the border to a bottling plant.
  • ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    For rereference from the eurostat website to save people clicking

    In 2019, the sold production of wine (including sparkling wine, port and grape must) in the EU was around 16 billion (bn) litres. The largest wine producers were Italy, Spain and France, followed by Portugal, Germany and Hungary.

    Mr Pioneers has france alone doing 3 times the total for the EU so something dodgy somewhere

    I think you’ve got the decimal point in the wrong place. It’s 167 billion litres, 65% of world production.

    https://ec.europa.eu/info/food-farming-fisheries/plants-and-plant-products/plant-products/wine_en
    From the first para of that link:

    "The European Union is the world-leading producer of wine. Between 2014 and 2018, the average annual production was 167 million hectolitres. It accounts for 45% of world wine-growing areas, 65% of production, 60% of global consumption and 70% of exports."

    My table was from the wine industry's data lifted of a website.

    Don't worry Pagan - I once worked with a factory manager who didn't understand numbers either. Which is why when he kept expensively getting decimal points in the wrong place is why he was no longer the factory manager.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,992
    Pagan2 said:

    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    TOPPING said:

    Pagan2 said:

    Pagan2 said:



    The total production of wine in 2018 for the whole world was 292 million hecto litres or 292 billion litres.
    The eu produced last year 14 billion litres of wine.....the idea that the rest of the world doesnt produce enough wine to to replace the 4 billion litres we import is ....odd

    Some odd numbers being quoted there. France Italy and Spain combined produce nearly half of the world's total output.

    See my reply to IanB2...now you can tell me why there figures are wrong but I am arguing from figures out there and they certainly dont show the eu being half of world production and the figures you quote are already far higher that an official ec source
    Perhaps you are looking at the numbers for mead?

    https://lmgtfy.app/?q=wine+production+by+country+2020
    I quote my source for eu wine which is an ec.europa/eurostat source
    Looking at that link it says that France/Italy/Spain each produce 3-5m litres/year. That accords with global production.

    Not sure what that link shows in your support.
    I asserted that total eu production was circa 14 billion...that link shows 16 billion....not an order of magnitude out
    Gah!
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868
    Pagan2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Pagan2 said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Yep, difficult to disagree with any of that.

    I do wonder, however, if it is just possible that those who were so convinced that the EU were the adults, the reasonable ones whose views and positions should be given unstinting respect and deference through the long and tedious Brexit saga are taking the opportunity to reflect. It turns out that the EU is not an institution of laws after all. It is a bureaucratic mess, slow and incompetent, with a massive democratic deficit who cannot be relied upon to respect the views of its members (in this case Ireland and Art 16).

    Thank the lord we are out of it. Now let's move on together and make the best of our own path.

    As I keep pointing out, there is a world of difference between the EU pooing the bed over their vaccine fiasco and the EU stating a core negotiating position that the UK refused to accept. Nor are the EU the reason why we have chosen to leave the EEA. From the EU's self-imposed idiocy to our own - a wine importer whose business cannot function under the rules the UK government demanded be imposed.

    Some of the responses are quite funny as well. "Can't you import wine from elsewhere?" No - it doesn't exist. ROW doesn't produce anywhere near enough wine to replace EU volume. Err, "they need our customs. can't the frogs tell Macron to change his rules?" No, these are our rules. Insisted on by the UK government.

    https://twitter.com/DanielLambert29/status/1355437505642975233
    Your constant posting of anti brexit stories is rather pointless even more so after these last few days

    We are not going back so business will have to adapt
    I think we know that. The actual issue at the moment (if you read the tweets) is the paperwork requirements are making low volume imports impossible.

    Importing a container with a single product on it not a problem - 1 set of paperwork required.
    Start importing different product within a single container and the problems start to occur - as you need 1 set of paperwork per product and any 1 mistake on single form is enough to block the whole container from moving.
    Start splitting pallets into smaller orders and real problems begin. Remember 1 mistake blocks the entire container

    We've spent 30+ years with paperwork free exports and imports from the EU. The introduction of paperwork (a lot of which HMRC have zero people who understand it) is making things impossible. And Covid is sweeping this under the table.

    Now things will get easier - but they will get easier by people reducing the products they import and export - so less paperwork is required and less paperwork is the only way to avoid mistakes occurring.
    So people will adjust. That's not impossible.

    If people don't want to adjust, especially people with EU flags in their Twitter handle, that's on them not politics.

    The idea it is "impossible" to import wines from outside of a customs union would be a strange thought to anyone who likes New World wines.
    Thanks for again demonstrating your ignorance on the subject. I am not remotely interested in wine, but I was interested in the response to someone else who made the same point you did. The production volume of New World wine cannot possibly replace the volume lost from not being able to import viably from the EEA - the wine simply doesn't exist in anywhere near sufficient volume to be imported as a replacement.

    So yes, its impossible to replace wine that doesn't exist.
    The total production of wine in 2018 for the whole world was 292 million hecto litres or 292 billion litres.
    The eu produced last year 14 billion litres of wine.....the idea that the rest of the world doesnt produce enough wine to to replace the 4 billion litres we import is ....odd
    I think you are out by a factor of 10 on the meaning of hectolitre.
    Lo! And so a clever PB'er spots his gross error.

    A very useful behaviour to adopt - and to encourage in others - is, before doing any calculation, take a rough guess as to what the answer might be. It'll prevent those embarrassments where you cock up an Excel formula and come up with a dumb answer, which you share with others because it came out of the computer and so must be true.

    In the long run it'll also make you better at guessing.
    a hecto litre is 100 litres yes? so a figure of 292 million hectolitres - 292,000,000 x 100 ah yes 29.2 doh its early
    That was hard work.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,477
    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    The correct price of anything is the price someone is willing to pay for it.

    If the price of importing is higher than many consumers are willing to pay for it, the economics of businesses importing them is no longer viable. Its *possible* to import at a price that not enough consumers are prepared to pay. So it doesn't get imported.

    I can sketch this with crayons if you like. Its called "adding". The ape-men of the Indus understand this, you and Baldrick apparently do not.
    Are you trying to explain the concept of Supply and Demand to me? After I already mentioned it? 🤔

    It may be possible to set an import price that no imports will happen. That's not going to happen though.

    What may happen is that there is a marginal price change, so some things will be marginally more expensive, which means marginally less trade. That is supply and demand, that is not an impossibility to trade though.
    £1.50 for paperwork on a £7 bottle of wine isn't marginal. Heck even on a £15 bottle of wine that isn't marginal.
    You can get New World bottles of wine for £4 (£3.33+VAT) in the supermarket.

    Are you suggesting that 50% of the price of the wine is the paperwork. Or is it possible to do the paperwork for less than £1.50 per bottle - eg if you buy a large shipment instead of a small one?
    I thought you were an expert on wine?

    The reality is that most New World wine now is shipped in tanks and bottled in the UK...

    Those tanks are of course already used 24/7 365 days of the year so are not immediately available for new imports.
    Yes, that's surely the kind of innovation we'll see for EU wines as well, it's better for the environment too as you're no longer transporting heavy glass bottles by truck.

    I think the government made a huge mistake in not having a 12 month deal implementation period where businesses had time to digest the new rules and switch to new import and export methods over the year.
    Perhaps, but personally I think the vast majority of businesses would have just burned through the implementation period and complained 99% as loudly when it ended. This immersion in freezing water approach is deeply uncomfortable and I do sympathise with businesses and people who've been caught up, but it will result in a very fast process of innovation/streamlining/realignment as people learn by doing.
  • Bickering over wine...PB on a monday.
  • Pagan2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    For rereference from the eurostat website to save people clicking

    In 2019, the sold production of wine (including sparkling wine, port and grape must) in the EU was around 16 billion (bn) litres. The largest wine producers were Italy, Spain and France, followed by Portugal, Germany and Hungary.

    Mr Pioneers has france alone doing 3 times the total for the EU so something dodgy somewhere

    I'd stop digging, if I were you.

    Being able to stand back from some data and quickly see that it is self evidently wrong is a useful skill - one that from my time in business I found isn't as common as you might hope. There's really no point in quibbling over details if your conclusion so obviously contains a gross error.
    So which bit of the eu producing 16 billion are you disputing....that website I beleive is the official eu one
    Can you advise what a hectolitre is?
  • OllyTOllyT Posts: 5,006
    edited February 2021

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    You just don't have a clue how anything works, and think that parading your ignorance every day somehow makes you right. When you are importing a container of wine from Australia the fees are a small part of the value of the load. When you are a UK wine buyer directly importing small loads from independent producers the volume is a lot smaller yet the fees are the same size. Which means either the consumer is willing to pay the large increase in costs or the transaction is no longer economically viable.

    Again, go and put these points to the guy who has spent almost 30 years in the wine business. You might learn something.
    Surely you know by now that PT is the world's leading expert on everything and none of the problems caused by Brexit are in reality a problem at all.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,600

    Bickering over wine...PB on a monday.

    ...and we haven't even ordered the lunch yet...
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,924
    edited February 2021
    Deleted yet another wine joke.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 9,877
    IanB2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Pagan2 said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Yep, difficult to disagree with any of that.

    I do wonder, however, if it is just possible that those who were so convinced that the EU were the adults, the reasonable ones whose views and positions should be given unstinting respect and deference through the long and tedious Brexit saga are taking the opportunity to reflect. It turns out that the EU is not an institution of laws after all. It is a bureaucratic mess, slow and incompetent, with a massive democratic deficit who cannot be relied upon to respect the views of its members (in this case Ireland and Art 16).

    Thank the lord we are out of it. Now let's move on together and make the best of our own path.

    As I keep pointing out, there is a world of difference between the EU pooing the bed over their vaccine fiasco and the EU stating a core negotiating position that the UK refused to accept. Nor are the EU the reason why we have chosen to leave the EEA. From the EU's self-imposed idiocy to our own - a wine importer whose business cannot function under the rules the UK government demanded be imposed.

    Some of the responses are quite funny as well. "Can't you import wine from elsewhere?" No - it doesn't exist. ROW doesn't produce anywhere near enough wine to replace EU volume. Err, "they need our customs. can't the frogs tell Macron to change his rules?" No, these are our rules. Insisted on by the UK government.

    https://twitter.com/DanielLambert29/status/1355437505642975233
    Your constant posting of anti brexit stories is rather pointless even more so after these last few days

    We are not going back so business will have to adapt
    I think we know that. The actual issue at the moment (if you read the tweets) is the paperwork requirements are making low volume imports impossible.

    Importing a container with a single product on it not a problem - 1 set of paperwork required.
    Start importing different product within a single container and the problems start to occur - as you need 1 set of paperwork per product and any 1 mistake on single form is enough to block the whole container from moving.
    Start splitting pallets into smaller orders and real problems begin. Remember 1 mistake blocks the entire container

    We've spent 30+ years with paperwork free exports and imports from the EU. The introduction of paperwork (a lot of which HMRC have zero people who understand it) is making things impossible. And Covid is sweeping this under the table.

    Now things will get easier - but they will get easier by people reducing the products they import and export - so less paperwork is required and less paperwork is the only way to avoid mistakes occurring.
    So people will adjust. That's not impossible.

    If people don't want to adjust, especially people with EU flags in their Twitter handle, that's on them not politics.

    The idea it is "impossible" to import wines from outside of a customs union would be a strange thought to anyone who likes New World wines.
    Thanks for again demonstrating your ignorance on the subject. I am not remotely interested in wine, but I was interested in the response to someone else who made the same point you did. The production volume of New World wine cannot possibly replace the volume lost from not being able to import viably from the EEA - the wine simply doesn't exist in anywhere near sufficient volume to be imported as a replacement.

    So yes, its impossible to replace wine that doesn't exist.
    The total production of wine in 2018 for the whole world was 292 million hecto litres or 292 billion litres.
    The eu produced last year 14 billion litres of wine.....the idea that the rest of the world doesnt produce enough wine to to replace the 4 billion litres we import is ....odd
    I think you are out by a factor of 10 on the meaning of hectolitre.
    Lo! And so a clever PB'er spots his gross error.

    A very useful behaviour to adopt - and to encourage in others - is, before doing any calculation, take a rough guess as to what the answer might be. It'll prevent those embarrassments where you cock up an Excel formula and come up with a dumb answer, which you share with others because it came out of the computer and so must be true.

    In the long run it'll also make you better at guessing.
    a hecto litre is 100 litres yes? so a figure of 292 million hectolitres - 292,000,000 x 100 ah yes 29.2 doh its early
    That was hard work.
    Well perhaps if someone had just said you have the decimal point in the wrong place rather than just saying no you are wrong without giving a reason why...always happy to go recheck a calculation because we all make mistakes
  • TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    Oh and Philip, here's that random bloke off twitter with FBPE in his handle spouting off about wine.

    What (tf) does he know, right?

    https://www.daniellambert.wine/
    We'll see.

    If it is "impossible" to buy EU wine after April then I am willing to make a £100 bet.

    I challenge anyone to pick a date* this year and I will go to my local supermarket or bottle store and look for a bottle of EU wine. If I can go to a bottle store or supermarket and pick up a bottle of EU wine then I'm happy to put a photograph of the bottle and my receipt here and you pay me £100. If I am incapable of finding any EU wines then I will pay you £100.

    Any takers? If I don't know what I'm talking about and it really is "impossible" to import wine after April, as opposed to a bit more inconvenient, then that should be guaranteed money in your pocket straight from a mug apparently. Who wants in?

    * Not Easter Sunday or Christmas Day, don't be a smartarse.
    You're not quite getting this whole thing are you?

    Of course it will be possible but choice will likely be diminished and prices likely higher.

    A poster-child Brexit success story.
    Thank you.

    I was arguing against the specific use of the word "impossible". "Of course it will be possible" means I was right.

    Thank you for agreeing with me.
    Well I'm sure that some suppliers may find it impossible.
    Don't they go into collective buying with other small suppliers though? It's not rocket science to split the fixed cost of paperwork over a larger order.
    If it becomes more competitive to buy larger containments instead of smaller ones then that's an adaptation not an impossibility.
    LOL you _really_ don't know how the wine trade (at the smaller end, for people such as Daniel Lambert) operates do you?

    Look it's no shame, you have to keep up with expertise on so many other sectors you can be forgiven for being absolutely pig ignorant on this one.
    If people want to deal with the small end that is on them as a niche.

    Bulk import, with eg a HGV being full of only on type of wine, and there are easily tens of thousands of bottles of wine in a single HGV. Bottled, not vat of liquid.

    Importing in bulk is an adjustment, not an impossibility and plenty of companies do it every single day.
  • As in birds? >Innocent Face<


  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,992
    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    The correct price of anything is the price someone is willing to pay for it.

    If the price of importing is higher than many consumers are willing to pay for it, the economics of businesses importing them is no longer viable. Its *possible* to import at a price that not enough consumers are prepared to pay. So it doesn't get imported.

    I can sketch this with crayons if you like. Its called "adding". The ape-men of the Indus understand this, you and Baldrick apparently do not.
    Are you trying to explain the concept of Supply and Demand to me? After I already mentioned it? 🤔

    It may be possible to set an import price that no imports will happen. That's not going to happen though.

    What may happen is that there is a marginal price change, so some things will be marginally more expensive, which means marginally less trade. That is supply and demand, that is not an impossibility to trade though.
    £1.50 for paperwork on a £7 bottle of wine isn't marginal. Heck even on a £15 bottle of wine that isn't marginal.
    You can get New World bottles of wine for £4 (£3.33+VAT) in the supermarket.

    Are you suggesting that 50% of the price of the wine is the paperwork. Or is it possible to do the paperwork for less than £1.50 per bottle - eg if you buy a large shipment instead of a small one?
    I thought you were an expert on wine?

    The reality is that most New World wine now is shipped in tanks and bottled in the UK...

    Those tanks are of course already used 24/7 365 days of the year so are not immediately available for new imports.
    Yes, that's surely the kind of innovation we'll see for EU wines as well, it's better for the environment too as you're no longer transporting heavy glass bottles by truck.

    I think the government made a huge mistake in not having a 12 month deal implementation period where businesses had time to digest the new rules and switch to new import and export methods over the year.
    Which is great on one level but does mean that small vineyards with limited supplies (i.e. the products the wine importer currently sells) will continue to be a red tape paperwork nightmare.
    I'm not sure that it does, if a small producer is selling 10,000 litres in the UK then I'm sure they can get a tanker to take it across the border to a bottling plant.
    Max that is not how it works.

    It simply isn't.

    Plus what bottling plant, exactly?
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677

    Dura_Ace said:



    a) telling, your failing to address my point about CPTPP.

    Obviously nobody knows less about this briefcase wanker stuff than me as I've never had a proper job but CPCPPTPTPEPPEPE can't be done within the life of this government.
    "CPCPPTPTPEPPEPE can't be done within the life of this government"

    The membership aplication goes in today.

    Negotiations this spring.

    It would be a big catch for the CPCPPTPTPEPPEPE, as we would be the second largest economy in there after Japan. I'm kinda thinking it might be in their interests to, you know, expedite their processes to get us in? After all, they wouldn't want to be thought....what's the word I'm looking for - sclerotic?

    Liz Truss can quietly apply that humane killer to Rejoin this year.

    BOOOOM.
    I will yield to your superior levels of briefcase wankery on this matter.

    The UK may have to Brexit that other thing before rejoining the EU.

    First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then Richard Tice is standing as MP for Hartlepool.
  • FloaterFloater Posts: 14,207

    Floater said:
    President Trump's son-in-law winning a Nobel Prize will not please The Donald. It should have been his.

    Tbh I'd have awarded Trump the Nobel Peace Prize just for sacking Neocon warmonger John Bolton.
    He would deserve it more than Obama did for sure.
  • I don't drink much.

    But, from the limited amount I've tried, I do not see the appeal of wine.

    There have been beers, and cider, and whisky I've liked. But wine is just tedious.
  • TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    The correct price of anything is the price someone is willing to pay for it.

    If the price of importing is higher than many consumers are willing to pay for it, the economics of businesses importing them is no longer viable. Its *possible* to import at a price that not enough consumers are prepared to pay. So it doesn't get imported.

    I can sketch this with crayons if you like. Its called "adding". The ape-men of the Indus understand this, you and Baldrick apparently do not.
    Are you trying to explain the concept of Supply and Demand to me? After I already mentioned it? 🤔

    It may be possible to set an import price that no imports will happen. That's not going to happen though.

    What may happen is that there is a marginal price change, so some things will be marginally more expensive, which means marginally less trade. That is supply and demand, that is not an impossibility to trade though.
    £1.50 for paperwork on a £7 bottle of wine isn't marginal. Heck even on a £15 bottle of wine that isn't marginal.
    You can get New World bottles of wine for £4 (£3.33+VAT) in the supermarket.

    Are you suggesting that 50% of the price of the wine is the paperwork. Or is it possible to do the paperwork for less than £1.50 per bottle - eg if you buy a large shipment instead of a small one?
    I thought you were an expert on wine?

    The reality is that most New World wine now is shipped in tanks and bottled in the UK...

    Those tanks are of course already used 24/7 365 days of the year so are not immediately available for new imports.
    Yes, that's surely the kind of innovation we'll see for EU wines as well, it's better for the environment too as you're no longer transporting heavy glass bottles by truck.

    I think the government made a huge mistake in not having a 12 month deal implementation period where businesses had time to digest the new rules and switch to new import and export methods over the year.
    Which is great on one level but does mean that small vineyards with limited supplies (i.e. the products the wine importer currently sells) will continue to be a red tape paperwork nightmare.
    I'm not sure that it does, if a small producer is selling 10,000 litres in the UK then I'm sure they can get a tanker to take it across the border to a bottling plant.
    Max that is not how it works.

    It simply isn't.

    Plus what bottling plant, exactly?
    They can build some if its economic to do so.

    Or tens of thousands of litres can be carried in a single HGV in bottles. How many bottles of wine do you think make up a 24 pallet HGV? It isn't single digit bottles of wine.
  • ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    For rereference from the eurostat website to save people clicking

    In 2019, the sold production of wine (including sparkling wine, port and grape must) in the EU was around 16 billion (bn) litres. The largest wine producers were Italy, Spain and France, followed by Portugal, Germany and Hungary.

    Mr Pioneers has france alone doing 3 times the total for the EU so something dodgy somewhere

    I think you’ve got the decimal point in the wrong place. It’s 167 billion litres, 65% of world production.

    https://ec.europa.eu/info/food-farming-fisheries/plants-and-plant-products/plant-products/wine_en
    From the first para of that link:

    "The European Union is the world-leading producer of wine. Between 2014 and 2018, the average annual production was 167 million hectolitres. It accounts for 45% of world wine-growing areas, 65% of production, 60% of global consumption and 70% of exports."

    My table was from the wine industry's data lifted of a website.

    Don't worry Pagan - I once worked with a factory manager who didn't understand numbers either. Which is why when he kept expensively getting decimal points in the wrong place is why he was no longer the factory manager.
    It's a pretty rare skill. Heck, I teach and examine A Level Physics. That's the subject for people who "get" numbers- even more so than maths. Not many people take it (rather less than 10% of each year group) and plenty of them don't develop the intuition to know when a calculation is off.

    Hence my dubiousness about the global cyber hub thing; what's everyone else meant to do?
  • eekeek Posts: 28,398
    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    The correct price of anything is the price someone is willing to pay for it.

    If the price of importing is higher than many consumers are willing to pay for it, the economics of businesses importing them is no longer viable. Its *possible* to import at a price that not enough consumers are prepared to pay. So it doesn't get imported.

    I can sketch this with crayons if you like. Its called "adding". The ape-men of the Indus understand this, you and Baldrick apparently do not.
    Are you trying to explain the concept of Supply and Demand to me? After I already mentioned it? 🤔

    It may be possible to set an import price that no imports will happen. That's not going to happen though.

    What may happen is that there is a marginal price change, so some things will be marginally more expensive, which means marginally less trade. That is supply and demand, that is not an impossibility to trade though.
    £1.50 for paperwork on a £7 bottle of wine isn't marginal. Heck even on a £15 bottle of wine that isn't marginal.
    You can get New World bottles of wine for £4 (£3.33+VAT) in the supermarket.

    Are you suggesting that 50% of the price of the wine is the paperwork. Or is it possible to do the paperwork for less than £1.50 per bottle - eg if you buy a large shipment instead of a small one?
    I thought you were an expert on wine?

    The reality is that most New World wine now is shipped in tanks and bottled in the UK...

    Those tanks are of course already used 24/7 365 days of the year so are not immediately available for new imports.
    Yes, that's surely the kind of innovation we'll see for EU wines as well, it's better for the environment too as you're no longer transporting heavy glass bottles by truck.

    I think the government made a huge mistake in not having a 12 month deal implementation period where businesses had time to digest the new rules and switch to new import and export methods over the year.
    Which is great on one level but does mean that small vineyards with limited supplies (i.e. the products the wine importer currently sells) will continue to be a red tape paperwork nightmare.
    I'm not sure that it does, if a small producer is selling 10,000 litres in the UK then I'm sure they can get a tanker to take it across the border to a bottling plant.
    And he can do that to supply his (say 8) different customers how?

    To avoid additional costs he needs to do that without any additional work required from himself and others and would need all 8 customers to accept the new process (for reference I'm assuming bottling costs in the EU and the UK would be identical).

    The simple fact is we have created additional work for people and

    1) all that work has to be paid for by us...
    2) a lot of firms are going to decide it's just not worth the hassle and focus on selling elsewhere.

  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    edited February 2021
    Deleted.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    Oh and Philip, here's that random bloke off twitter with FBPE in his handle spouting off about wine.

    What (tf) does he know, right?

    https://www.daniellambert.wine/
    We'll see.

    If it is "impossible" to buy EU wine after April then I am willing to make a £100 bet.

    I challenge anyone to pick a date* this year and I will go to my local supermarket or bottle store and look for a bottle of EU wine. If I can go to a bottle store or supermarket and pick up a bottle of EU wine then I'm happy to put a photograph of the bottle and my receipt here and you pay me £100. If I am incapable of finding any EU wines then I will pay you £100.

    Any takers? If I don't know what I'm talking about and it really is "impossible" to import wine after April, as opposed to a bit more inconvenient, then that should be guaranteed money in your pocket straight from a mug apparently. Who wants in?

    * Not Easter Sunday or Christmas Day, don't be a smartarse.
    You're not quite getting this whole thing are you?

    Of course it will be possible but choice will likely be diminished and prices likely higher.

    A poster-child Brexit success story.
    Thank you.

    I was arguing against the specific use of the word "impossible". "Of course it will be possible" means I was right.

    Thank you for agreeing with me.
    Well I'm sure that some suppliers may find it impossible.
    Don't they go into collective buying with other small suppliers though? It's not rocket science to split the fixed cost of paperwork over a larger order.
    If it becomes more competitive to buy larger containments instead of smaller ones then that's an adaptation not an impossibility.
    LOL you _really_ don't know how the wine trade (at the smaller end, for people such as Daniel Lambert) operates do you?

    Look it's no shame, you have to keep up with expertise on so many other sectors you can be forgiven for being absolutely pig ignorant on this one.
    If people want to deal with the small end that is on them as a niche.

    Bulk import, with eg a HGV being full of only on type of wine, and there are easily tens of thousands of bottles of wine in a single HGV. Bottled, not vat of liquid.

    Importing in bulk is an adjustment, not an impossibility and plenty of companies do it every single day.
    So life gets worse and more expensive, people go out of business, but hey, "that's on them." Serve them right for entrepreneurism. As I've said before I love the way this affected insouciance evaporates like snow in summer when you personally are affected because house prices are too high for you or someone threatens to take away your jab. Chill, it's all market forces.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 9,877
    Alistair said:

    Deleted.

    Yes I shifted a decimal point already admitted it, an honest mistake
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868
    Pagan2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Pagan2 said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Yep, difficult to disagree with any of that.

    I do wonder, however, if it is just possible that those who were so convinced that the EU were the adults, the reasonable ones whose views and positions should be given unstinting respect and deference through the long and tedious Brexit saga are taking the opportunity to reflect. It turns out that the EU is not an institution of laws after all. It is a bureaucratic mess, slow and incompetent, with a massive democratic deficit who cannot be relied upon to respect the views of its members (in this case Ireland and Art 16).

    Thank the lord we are out of it. Now let's move on together and make the best of our own path.

    As I keep pointing out, there is a world of difference between the EU pooing the bed over their vaccine fiasco and the EU stating a core negotiating position that the UK refused to accept. Nor are the EU the reason why we have chosen to leave the EEA. From the EU's self-imposed idiocy to our own - a wine importer whose business cannot function under the rules the UK government demanded be imposed.

    Some of the responses are quite funny as well. "Can't you import wine from elsewhere?" No - it doesn't exist. ROW doesn't produce anywhere near enough wine to replace EU volume. Err, "they need our customs. can't the frogs tell Macron to change his rules?" No, these are our rules. Insisted on by the UK government.

    https://twitter.com/DanielLambert29/status/1355437505642975233
    Your constant posting of anti brexit stories is rather pointless even more so after these last few days

    We are not going back so business will have to adapt
    I think we know that. The actual issue at the moment (if you read the tweets) is the paperwork requirements are making low volume imports impossible.

    Importing a container with a single product on it not a problem - 1 set of paperwork required.
    Start importing different product within a single container and the problems start to occur - as you need 1 set of paperwork per product and any 1 mistake on single form is enough to block the whole container from moving.
    Start splitting pallets into smaller orders and real problems begin. Remember 1 mistake blocks the entire container

    We've spent 30+ years with paperwork free exports and imports from the EU. The introduction of paperwork (a lot of which HMRC have zero people who understand it) is making things impossible. And Covid is sweeping this under the table.

    Now things will get easier - but they will get easier by people reducing the products they import and export - so less paperwork is required and less paperwork is the only way to avoid mistakes occurring.
    So people will adjust. That's not impossible.

    If people don't want to adjust, especially people with EU flags in their Twitter handle, that's on them not politics.

    The idea it is "impossible" to import wines from outside of a customs union would be a strange thought to anyone who likes New World wines.
    Thanks for again demonstrating your ignorance on the subject. I am not remotely interested in wine, but I was interested in the response to someone else who made the same point you did. The production volume of New World wine cannot possibly replace the volume lost from not being able to import viably from the EEA - the wine simply doesn't exist in anywhere near sufficient volume to be imported as a replacement.

    So yes, its impossible to replace wine that doesn't exist.
    The total production of wine in 2018 for the whole world was 292 million hecto litres or 292 billion litres.
    The eu produced last year 14 billion litres of wine.....the idea that the rest of the world doesnt produce enough wine to to replace the 4 billion litres we import is ....odd
    I think you are out by a factor of 10 on the meaning of hectolitre.
    Lo! And so a clever PB'er spots his gross error.

    A very useful behaviour to adopt - and to encourage in others - is, before doing any calculation, take a rough guess as to what the answer might be. It'll prevent those embarrassments where you cock up an Excel formula and come up with a dumb answer, which you share with others because it came out of the computer and so must be true.

    In the long run it'll also make you better at guessing.
    a hecto litre is 100 litres yes? so a figure of 292 million hectolitres - 292,000,000 x 100 ah yes 29.2 doh its early
    That was hard work.
    Well perhaps if someone had just said you have the decimal point in the wrong place rather than just saying no you are wrong without giving a reason why...always happy to go recheck a calculation because we all make mistakes
    That you had made a mistake was obvious - and should have been to you. That's the learning point. It's not our job to work out why you went wrong.
  • eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    The correct price of anything is the price someone is willing to pay for it.

    If the price of importing is higher than many consumers are willing to pay for it, the economics of businesses importing them is no longer viable. Its *possible* to import at a price that not enough consumers are prepared to pay. So it doesn't get imported.

    I can sketch this with crayons if you like. Its called "adding". The ape-men of the Indus understand this, you and Baldrick apparently do not.
    Are you trying to explain the concept of Supply and Demand to me? After I already mentioned it? 🤔

    It may be possible to set an import price that no imports will happen. That's not going to happen though.

    What may happen is that there is a marginal price change, so some things will be marginally more expensive, which means marginally less trade. That is supply and demand, that is not an impossibility to trade though.
    £1.50 for paperwork on a £7 bottle of wine isn't marginal. Heck even on a £15 bottle of wine that isn't marginal.
    You can get New World bottles of wine for £4 (£3.33+VAT) in the supermarket.

    Are you suggesting that 50% of the price of the wine is the paperwork. Or is it possible to do the paperwork for less than £1.50 per bottle - eg if you buy a large shipment instead of a small one?
    I thought you were an expert on wine?

    The reality is that most New World wine now is shipped in tanks and bottled in the UK...

    Those tanks are of course already used 24/7 365 days of the year so are not immediately available for new imports.
    Yes, that's surely the kind of innovation we'll see for EU wines as well, it's better for the environment too as you're no longer transporting heavy glass bottles by truck.

    I think the government made a huge mistake in not having a 12 month deal implementation period where businesses had time to digest the new rules and switch to new import and export methods over the year.
    Which is great on one level but does mean that small vineyards with limited supplies (i.e. the products the wine importer currently sells) will continue to be a red tape paperwork nightmare.
    I'm not sure that it does, if a small producer is selling 10,000 litres in the UK then I'm sure they can get a tanker to take it across the border to a bottling plant.
    And he can do that to supply his (say 8) different customers how?

    To avoid additional costs he needs to do that without any additional work required from himself and others and would need all 8 customers to accept the new process (for reference I'm assuming bottling costs in the EU and the UK would be identical).

    The simple fact is we have created additional work for people and

    1) all that work has to be paid for by us...
    2) a lot of firms are going to decide it's just not worth the hassle and focus on selling elsewhere.

    That's called adjustment. I don't think any Brexiteer here has denied there will be disruption and adjustments.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,992

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    Oh and Philip, here's that random bloke off twitter with FBPE in his handle spouting off about wine.

    What (tf) does he know, right?

    https://www.daniellambert.wine/
    We'll see.

    If it is "impossible" to buy EU wine after April then I am willing to make a £100 bet.

    I challenge anyone to pick a date* this year and I will go to my local supermarket or bottle store and look for a bottle of EU wine. If I can go to a bottle store or supermarket and pick up a bottle of EU wine then I'm happy to put a photograph of the bottle and my receipt here and you pay me £100. If I am incapable of finding any EU wines then I will pay you £100.

    Any takers? If I don't know what I'm talking about and it really is "impossible" to import wine after April, as opposed to a bit more inconvenient, then that should be guaranteed money in your pocket straight from a mug apparently. Who wants in?

    * Not Easter Sunday or Christmas Day, don't be a smartarse.
    You're not quite getting this whole thing are you?

    Of course it will be possible but choice will likely be diminished and prices likely higher.

    A poster-child Brexit success story.
    Thank you.

    I was arguing against the specific use of the word "impossible". "Of course it will be possible" means I was right.

    Thank you for agreeing with me.
    Well I'm sure that some suppliers may find it impossible.
    Don't they go into collective buying with other small suppliers though? It's not rocket science to split the fixed cost of paperwork over a larger order.
    If it becomes more competitive to buy larger containments instead of smaller ones then that's an adaptation not an impossibility.
    LOL you _really_ don't know how the wine trade (at the smaller end, for people such as Daniel Lambert) operates do you?

    Look it's no shame, you have to keep up with expertise on so many other sectors you can be forgiven for being absolutely pig ignorant on this one.
    If people want to deal with the small end that is on them as a niche.

    Bulk import, with eg a HGV being full of only on type of wine, and there are easily tens of thousands of bottles of wine in a single HGV. Bottled, not vat of liquid.

    Importing in bulk is an adjustment, not an impossibility and plenty of companies do it every single day.
    Which brings us back to Danny Lambert and his wines, whom you refused to take seriously.

    For small, independent wine merchants this is first of all not how they operate or their business model. It is like saying it's expensive to import BMW M340i's so why not import 20 Peugeot 306s instead?

    It is also expensive, time consuming, and might make the business unviable. Actually, given the market positioning of such businesses I would say it is "impossible". If they are to maintain their business at current levels.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868
    MaxPB said:

    Bickering over wine...PB on a monday.

    Because it's too early to drink it!
    Right on cue...Women's Hour is doing problem drinking during lockdown
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,798
    Pagan2 said:

    kjh said:

    Pagan2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Yep, difficult to disagree with any of that.

    I do wonder, however, if it is just possible that those who were so convinced that the EU were the adults, the reasonable ones whose views and positions should be given unstinting respect and deference through the long and tedious Brexit saga are taking the opportunity to reflect. It turns out that the EU is not an institution of laws after all. It is a bureaucratic mess, slow and incompetent, with a massive democratic deficit who cannot be relied upon to respect the views of its members (in this case Ireland and Art 16).

    Thank the lord we are out of it. Now let's move on together and make the best of our own path.

    As I keep pointing out, there is a world of difference between the EU pooing the bed over their vaccine fiasco and the EU stating a core negotiating position that the UK refused to accept. Nor are the EU the reason why we have chosen to leave the EEA. From the EU's self-imposed idiocy to our own - a wine importer whose business cannot function under the rules the UK government demanded be imposed.

    Some of the responses are quite funny as well. "Can't you import wine from elsewhere?" No - it doesn't exist. ROW doesn't produce anywhere near enough wine to replace EU volume. Err, "they need our customs. can't the frogs tell Macron to change his rules?" No, these are our rules. Insisted on by the UK government.

    https://twitter.com/DanielLambert29/status/1355437505642975233
    Your constant posting of anti brexit stories is rather pointless even more so after these last few days

    We are not going back so business will have to adapt
    I think we know that. The actual issue at the moment (if you read the tweets) is the paperwork requirements are making low volume imports impossible.

    Importing a container with a single product on it not a problem - 1 set of paperwork required.
    Start importing different product within a single container and the problems start to occur - as you need 1 set of paperwork per product and any 1 mistake on single form is enough to block the whole container from moving.
    Start splitting pallets into smaller orders and real problems begin. Remember 1 mistake blocks the entire container

    We've spent 30+ years with paperwork free exports and imports from the EU. The introduction of paperwork (a lot of which HMRC have zero people who understand it) is making things impossible. And Covid is sweeping this under the table.

    Now things will get easier - but they will get easier by people reducing the products they import and export - so less paperwork is required and less paperwork is the only way to avoid mistakes occurring.
    So people will adjust. That's not impossible.

    If people don't want to adjust, especially people with EU flags in their Twitter handle, that's on them not politics.

    The idea it is "impossible" to import wines from outside of a customs union would be a strange thought to anyone who likes New World wines.
    Thanks for again demonstrating your ignorance on the subject. I am not remotely interested in wine, but I was interested in the response to someone else who made the same point you did. The production volume of New World wine cannot possibly replace the volume lost from not being able to import viably from the EEA - the wine simply doesn't exist in anywhere near sufficient volume to be imported as a replacement.

    So yes, its impossible to replace wine that doesn't exist.
    The total production of wine in 2018 for the whole world was 292 million hecto litres or 292 billion litres.
    The eu produced last year 14 billion litres of wine.....the idea that the rest of the world doesnt produce enough wine to to replace the 4 billion litres we import is ....odd
    That is clearly fake news.

    The total production figure looks about right.

    But the three biggest wine producing countries in the world are Italy, Spain and France, each accounting for 15-20% of the total. So it is self evident that the rest of your data are wrong.

    Australia, NZ, Chile etc are down at around 4% - they figure more prominently for British drinkers because the UK is already one of their principal importers.
    https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/EDN-20201119-2#:~:text=In 2019, the sold production,by Portugal, Germany and Hungary.

    https://www.bkwine.com/features/more/world-wine-production-reaches-record-level-2018-consumption-stable/

    Well go dispute with those people
    Did you actually read what you posted 😃
    which bit of the sold production of eu wine is 16 billions litres are you disputing.....a figure that widely differs from mr pioneers for which he didnt link to a source?
    Why don't you read the articles and just have a look at the nice pie charts and the percentages put in bold for French, Spanish and Italian and EU production and then have a good think about whether they are consistent with what you have stated.

    I mean it is not as if we are in the right ball park here are we? That should leap out at anyone posting this surely.

    But then 24 hours haven't passed since you claimed with certainty one of our posters had been vaccinated without any evidence whatsoever, but based upon an assumption of his age because you can't tell the difference between a joke and a serious post.

    Analytical skills not at the forefront or too quick to post. We all do it.
  • IshmaelZ said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    Oh and Philip, here's that random bloke off twitter with FBPE in his handle spouting off about wine.

    What (tf) does he know, right?

    https://www.daniellambert.wine/
    We'll see.

    If it is "impossible" to buy EU wine after April then I am willing to make a £100 bet.

    I challenge anyone to pick a date* this year and I will go to my local supermarket or bottle store and look for a bottle of EU wine. If I can go to a bottle store or supermarket and pick up a bottle of EU wine then I'm happy to put a photograph of the bottle and my receipt here and you pay me £100. If I am incapable of finding any EU wines then I will pay you £100.

    Any takers? If I don't know what I'm talking about and it really is "impossible" to import wine after April, as opposed to a bit more inconvenient, then that should be guaranteed money in your pocket straight from a mug apparently. Who wants in?

    * Not Easter Sunday or Christmas Day, don't be a smartarse.
    You're not quite getting this whole thing are you?

    Of course it will be possible but choice will likely be diminished and prices likely higher.

    A poster-child Brexit success story.
    Thank you.

    I was arguing against the specific use of the word "impossible". "Of course it will be possible" means I was right.

    Thank you for agreeing with me.
    Well I'm sure that some suppliers may find it impossible.
    Don't they go into collective buying with other small suppliers though? It's not rocket science to split the fixed cost of paperwork over a larger order.
    If it becomes more competitive to buy larger containments instead of smaller ones then that's an adaptation not an impossibility.
    LOL you _really_ don't know how the wine trade (at the smaller end, for people such as Daniel Lambert) operates do you?

    Look it's no shame, you have to keep up with expertise on so many other sectors you can be forgiven for being absolutely pig ignorant on this one.
    If people want to deal with the small end that is on them as a niche.

    Bulk import, with eg a HGV being full of only on type of wine, and there are easily tens of thousands of bottles of wine in a single HGV. Bottled, not vat of liquid.

    Importing in bulk is an adjustment, not an impossibility and plenty of companies do it every single day.
    So life gets worse and more expensive, people go out of business, but hey, "that's on them." Serve them right for entrepreneurism. As I've said before I love the way this affected insouciance evaporates like snow in summer when you personally are affected because house prices are too high for you or someone threatens to take away your jab. Chill, it's all market forces.
    I've got no problem with house prices being high in a free market. If house prices are high in a free market then someone should buy some land, build a house on it and sell it which will bring house prices down. That is supply and demand, that is how a free market works.

    It is you that is against a free market in housing, not me.
  • kamskikamski Posts: 5,191
    Good Header. The EU commission has been rubbish. And, from a German perspective, Merkel has seemingly been absent, as she has been throughout this pandemic. I would have expected a bit more leadership from the German chancellor.

    From a wider perspective, and ignoring the current spat which I suspect will have little effect on the vaccination rollout (though obviously damaging to relationships and the Commission's reputation), how would things be if there had been no EU vaccine procurement? I guess some countries would have done better, others worse, but either way we'd probably have a massive mess with neighboring countries arguing over whose orders should be reduced the least.

    It makes sense for Britain to do its own thing being an island. It also makes sense for Britain to try and get the whole island of Ireland vaccinated, as that is where the only UK land border is.

    I wouldn't expect the UK to offer spare vaccines to the rest of the EU, though a gesture might be worth it as a way to try to get the UK included back into the "European solidarity" which it people think it has withdrawn itself from.
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,164
    tlg86 said:

    Brom said:

    The news this morning from Inzaman Rashid on the dangers of covid to everyone, but perhaps more so the young or the BAME is well worth being widely publicised. May save a few more lives.

    26 year old Sky News correspondent parties with Kay Burley on the infamous night and gets suspended from his job for 3 months. Heads off to Dubai to escape media attention and get some winter sun. Returns at Christmas to see his family and tests positive on Dec 28th. Seriously ill alongside his parents who are now recovering but his dad may have long term irreversible effects. Good of him to warn everyone but incredible this chain of events happened in the first place.

    Just read his thread - not once does he show any remorse for his actions. I think the government has done a piss poor job and the people generally need to be given a firm line to make them behave. But the bahviour of some individuals has been thoroughly appalling.
    People like that are the loudest to criticise and the least self-aware. The sense of entitlement is appalling.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited February 2021
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    Oh and Philip, here's that random bloke off twitter with FBPE in his handle spouting off about wine.

    What (tf) does he know, right?

    https://www.daniellambert.wine/
    We'll see.

    If it is "impossible" to buy EU wine after April then I am willing to make a £100 bet.

    I challenge anyone to pick a date* this year and I will go to my local supermarket or bottle store and look for a bottle of EU wine. If I can go to a bottle store or supermarket and pick up a bottle of EU wine then I'm happy to put a photograph of the bottle and my receipt here and you pay me £100. If I am incapable of finding any EU wines then I will pay you £100.

    Any takers? If I don't know what I'm talking about and it really is "impossible" to import wine after April, as opposed to a bit more inconvenient, then that should be guaranteed money in your pocket straight from a mug apparently. Who wants in?

    * Not Easter Sunday or Christmas Day, don't be a smartarse.
    You're not quite getting this whole thing are you?

    Of course it will be possible but choice will likely be diminished and prices likely higher.

    A poster-child Brexit success story.
    Thank you.

    I was arguing against the specific use of the word "impossible". "Of course it will be possible" means I was right.

    Thank you for agreeing with me.
    Well I'm sure that some suppliers may find it impossible.
    Don't they go into collective buying with other small suppliers though? It's not rocket science to split the fixed cost of paperwork over a larger order.
    If it becomes more competitive to buy larger containments instead of smaller ones then that's an adaptation not an impossibility.
    LOL you _really_ don't know how the wine trade (at the smaller end, for people such as Daniel Lambert) operates do you?

    Look it's no shame, you have to keep up with expertise on so many other sectors you can be forgiven for being absolutely pig ignorant on this one.
    If people want to deal with the small end that is on them as a niche.

    Bulk import, with eg a HGV being full of only on type of wine, and there are easily tens of thousands of bottles of wine in a single HGV. Bottled, not vat of liquid.

    Importing in bulk is an adjustment, not an impossibility and plenty of companies do it every single day.
    Which brings us back to Danny Lambert and his wines, whom you refused to take seriously.

    For small, independent wine merchants this is first of all not how they operate or their business model. It is like saying it's expensive to import BMW M340i's so why not import 20 Peugeot 306s instead?

    It is also expensive, time consuming, and might make the business unviable. Actually, given the market positioning of such businesses I would say it is "impossible". If they are to maintain their business at current levels.
    If their business model needs to change then change the business model. Get ready for Brexit.

    If it becomes cheaper for a company to handle bulk import of wine to then sell on to the wine merchants then that can be how its best to operate perhaps. Just because things are different and take some adjustment doesn't make them impossible.

    As it happens there are already many companies involved in the business of importing in bulk then selling on to merchants.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,798
    Pagan2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Pagan2 said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Yep, difficult to disagree with any of that.

    I do wonder, however, if it is just possible that those who were so convinced that the EU were the adults, the reasonable ones whose views and positions should be given unstinting respect and deference through the long and tedious Brexit saga are taking the opportunity to reflect. It turns out that the EU is not an institution of laws after all. It is a bureaucratic mess, slow and incompetent, with a massive democratic deficit who cannot be relied upon to respect the views of its members (in this case Ireland and Art 16).

    Thank the lord we are out of it. Now let's move on together and make the best of our own path.

    As I keep pointing out, there is a world of difference between the EU pooing the bed over their vaccine fiasco and the EU stating a core negotiating position that the UK refused to accept. Nor are the EU the reason why we have chosen to leave the EEA. From the EU's self-imposed idiocy to our own - a wine importer whose business cannot function under the rules the UK government demanded be imposed.

    Some of the responses are quite funny as well. "Can't you import wine from elsewhere?" No - it doesn't exist. ROW doesn't produce anywhere near enough wine to replace EU volume. Err, "they need our customs. can't the frogs tell Macron to change his rules?" No, these are our rules. Insisted on by the UK government.

    https://twitter.com/DanielLambert29/status/1355437505642975233
    Your constant posting of anti brexit stories is rather pointless even more so after these last few days

    We are not going back so business will have to adapt
    I think we know that. The actual issue at the moment (if you read the tweets) is the paperwork requirements are making low volume imports impossible.

    Importing a container with a single product on it not a problem - 1 set of paperwork required.
    Start importing different product within a single container and the problems start to occur - as you need 1 set of paperwork per product and any 1 mistake on single form is enough to block the whole container from moving.
    Start splitting pallets into smaller orders and real problems begin. Remember 1 mistake blocks the entire container

    We've spent 30+ years with paperwork free exports and imports from the EU. The introduction of paperwork (a lot of which HMRC have zero people who understand it) is making things impossible. And Covid is sweeping this under the table.

    Now things will get easier - but they will get easier by people reducing the products they import and export - so less paperwork is required and less paperwork is the only way to avoid mistakes occurring.
    So people will adjust. That's not impossible.

    If people don't want to adjust, especially people with EU flags in their Twitter handle, that's on them not politics.

    The idea it is "impossible" to import wines from outside of a customs union would be a strange thought to anyone who likes New World wines.
    Thanks for again demonstrating your ignorance on the subject. I am not remotely interested in wine, but I was interested in the response to someone else who made the same point you did. The production volume of New World wine cannot possibly replace the volume lost from not being able to import viably from the EEA - the wine simply doesn't exist in anywhere near sufficient volume to be imported as a replacement.

    So yes, its impossible to replace wine that doesn't exist.
    The total production of wine in 2018 for the whole world was 292 million hecto litres or 292 billion litres.
    The eu produced last year 14 billion litres of wine.....the idea that the rest of the world doesnt produce enough wine to to replace the 4 billion litres we import is ....odd
    I think you are out by a factor of 10 on the meaning of hectolitre.
    Lo! And so a clever PB'er spots his gross error.

    A very useful behaviour to adopt - and to encourage in others - is, before doing any calculation, take a rough guess as to what the answer might be. It'll prevent those embarrassments where you cock up an Excel formula and come up with a dumb answer, which you share with others because it came out of the computer and so must be true.

    In the long run it'll also make you better at guessing.
    a hecto litre is 100 litres yes? so a figure of 292 million hectolitres - 292,000,000 x 100 ah yes 29.2 doh its early
    That was hard work.
    Well perhaps if someone had just said you have the decimal point in the wrong place rather than just saying no you are wrong without giving a reason why...always happy to go recheck a calculation because we all make mistakes
    Just read the links you posted. It told you, you were wrong many times and with pictures.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,398
    edited February 2021

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    The correct price of anything is the price someone is willing to pay for it.

    If the price of importing is higher than many consumers are willing to pay for it, the economics of businesses importing them is no longer viable. Its *possible* to import at a price that not enough consumers are prepared to pay. So it doesn't get imported.

    I can sketch this with crayons if you like. Its called "adding". The ape-men of the Indus understand this, you and Baldrick apparently do not.
    Are you trying to explain the concept of Supply and Demand to me? After I already mentioned it? 🤔

    It may be possible to set an import price that no imports will happen. That's not going to happen though.

    What may happen is that there is a marginal price change, so some things will be marginally more expensive, which means marginally less trade. That is supply and demand, that is not an impossibility to trade though.
    £1.50 for paperwork on a £7 bottle of wine isn't marginal. Heck even on a £15 bottle of wine that isn't marginal.
    You can get New World bottles of wine for £4 (£3.33+VAT) in the supermarket.

    Are you suggesting that 50% of the price of the wine is the paperwork. Or is it possible to do the paperwork for less than £1.50 per bottle - eg if you buy a large shipment instead of a small one?
    I thought you were an expert on wine?

    The reality is that most New World wine now is shipped in tanks and bottled in the UK...

    Those tanks are of course already used 24/7 365 days of the year so are not immediately available for new imports.
    Yes, that's surely the kind of innovation we'll see for EU wines as well, it's better for the environment too as you're no longer transporting heavy glass bottles by truck.

    I think the government made a huge mistake in not having a 12 month deal implementation period where businesses had time to digest the new rules and switch to new import and export methods over the year.
    Which is great on one level but does mean that small vineyards with limited supplies (i.e. the products the wine importer currently sells) will continue to be a red tape paperwork nightmare.
    I'm not sure that it does, if a small producer is selling 10,000 litres in the UK then I'm sure they can get a tanker to take it across the border to a bottling plant.
    And he can do that to supply his (say 8) different customers how?

    To avoid additional costs he needs to do that without any additional work required from himself and others and would need all 8 customers to accept the new process (for reference I'm assuming bottling costs in the EU and the UK would be identical).

    The simple fact is we have created additional work for people and

    1) all that work has to be paid for by us...
    2) a lot of firms are going to decide it's just not worth the hassle and focus on selling elsewhere.

    That's called adjustment. I don't think any Brexiteer here has denied there will be disruption and adjustments.
    A lot of Brexiteers are discovering that that disruption and adjustment equals their bankruptcy...

    And if they are annoyed about it you can imagine how those who voted to remain feel about the bankruptcy that disruption and adjustment is doing to their business.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,798
    MaxPB said:

    Bickering over wine...PB on a monday.

    Because it's too early to drink it!
    Who says?
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,462

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    For rereference from the eurostat website to save people clicking

    In 2019, the sold production of wine (including sparkling wine, port and grape must) in the EU was around 16 billion (bn) litres. The largest wine producers were Italy, Spain and France, followed by Portugal, Germany and Hungary.

    Mr Pioneers has france alone doing 3 times the total for the EU so something dodgy somewhere

    I think you’ve got the decimal point in the wrong place. It’s 167 billion litres, 65% of world production.

    https://ec.europa.eu/info/food-farming-fisheries/plants-and-plant-products/plant-products/wine_en
    From the first para of that link:

    "The European Union is the world-leading producer of wine. Between 2014 and 2018, the average annual production was 167 million hectolitres. It accounts for 45% of world wine-growing areas, 65% of production, 60% of global consumption and 70% of exports."

    My table was from the wine industry's data lifted of a website.

    Don't worry Pagan - I once worked with a factory manager who didn't understand numbers either. Which is why when he kept expensively getting decimal points in the wrong place is why he was no longer the factory manager.
    Mr P, you are in good company with your decimal point. It can be a major hassle in medicine. I've posted before about a 2am argument with an anaesthetist who was convinced pharmacy had supplied him with syringes which were only 10% of the dose he required.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,220
    More encouraging news.

    Assessment of Maternal and Neonatal Cord Blood SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies and Placental Transfer Ratios
    https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2775945
    ...In this cohort study, maternal IgG antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 were transferred across the placenta after asymptomatic as well as symptomatic infection during pregnancy. Cord blood antibody concentrations correlated with maternal antibody concentrations and with duration between onset of infection and delivery. Our findings demonstrate the potential for maternally derived SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies to provide neonatal protection from coronavirus disease 2019...
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 9,877
    edited February 2021
    kjh said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kjh said:

    Pagan2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Yep, difficult to disagree with any of that.

    I do wonder, however, if it is just possible that those who were so convinced that the EU were the adults, the reasonable ones whose views and positions should be given unstinting respect and deference through the long and tedious Brexit saga are taking the opportunity to reflect. It turns out that the EU is not an institution of laws after all. It is a bureaucratic mess, slow and incompetent, with a massive democratic deficit who cannot be relied upon to respect the views of its members (in this case Ireland and Art 16).

    Thank the lord we are out of it. Now let's move on together and make the best of our own path.

    As I keep pointing out, there is a world of difference between the EU pooing the bed over their vaccine fiasco and the EU stating a core negotiating position that the UK refused to accept. Nor are the EU the reason why we have chosen to leave the EEA. From the EU's self-imposed idiocy to our own - a wine importer whose business cannot function under the rules the UK government demanded be imposed.

    Some of the responses are quite funny as well. "Can't you import wine from elsewhere?" No - it doesn't exist. ROW doesn't produce anywhere near enough wine to replace EU volume. Err, "they need our customs. can't the frogs tell Macron to change his rules?" No, these are our rules. Insisted on by the UK government.

    https://twitter.com/DanielLambert29/status/1355437505642975233
    Your constant posting of anti brexit stories is rather pointless even more so after these last few days

    We are not going back so business will have to adapt
    I think we know that. The actual issue at the moment (if you read the tweets) is the paperwork requirements are making low volume imports impossible.

    Importing a container with a single product on it not a problem - 1 set of paperwork required.
    Start importing different product within a single container and the problems start to occur - as you need 1 set of paperwork per product and any 1 mistake on single form is enough to block the whole container from moving.
    Start splitting pallets into smaller orders and real problems begin. Remember 1 mistake blocks the entire container

    We've spent 30+ years with paperwork free exports and imports from the EU. The introduction of paperwork (a lot of which HMRC have zero people who understand it) is making things impossible. And Covid is sweeping this under the table.

    Now things will get easier - but they will get easier by people reducing the products they import and export - so less paperwork is required and less paperwork is the only way to avoid mistakes occurring.
    So people will adjust. That's not impossible.

    If people don't want to adjust, especially people with EU flags in their Twitter handle, that's on them not politics.

    The idea it is "impossible" to import wines from outside of a customs union would be a strange thought to anyone who likes New World wines.
    Thanks for again demonstrating your ignorance on the subject. I am not remotely interested in wine, but I was interested in the response to someone else who made the same point you did. The production volume of New World wine cannot possibly replace the volume lost from not being able to import viably from the EEA - the wine simply doesn't exist in anywhere near sufficient volume to be imported as a replacement.

    So yes, its impossible to replace wine that doesn't exist.
    The total production of wine in 2018 for the whole world was 292 million hecto litres or 292 billion litres.
    The eu produced last year 14 billion litres of wine.....the idea that the rest of the world doesnt produce enough wine to to replace the 4 billion litres we import is ....odd
    That is clearly fake news.

    The total production figure looks about right.

    But the three biggest wine producing countries in the world are Italy, Spain and France, each accounting for 15-20% of the total. So it is self evident that the rest of your data are wrong.

    Australia, NZ, Chile etc are down at around 4% - they figure more prominently for British drinkers because the UK is already one of their principal importers.
    https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/EDN-20201119-2#:~:text=In 2019, the sold production,by Portugal, Germany and Hungary.

    https://www.bkwine.com/features/more/world-wine-production-reaches-record-level-2018-consumption-stable/

    Well go dispute with those people
    Did you actually read what you posted 😃
    which bit of the sold production of eu wine is 16 billions litres are you disputing.....a figure that widely differs from mr pioneers for which he didnt link to a source?
    Why don't you read the articles and just have a look at the nice pie charts and the percentages put in bold for French, Spanish and Italian and EU production and then have a good think about whether they are consistent with what you have stated.

    I mean it is not as if we are in the right ball park here are we? That should leap out at anyone posting this surely.

    But then 24 hours haven't passed since you claimed with certainty one of our posters had been vaccinated without any evidence whatsoever, but based upon an assumption of his age because you can't tell the difference between a joke and a serious post.

    Analytical skills not at the forefront or too quick to post. We all do it.
    In my defence at least I went to look at sources to see before I posted which is somewhat more than some do. And I did apologise to the poster last night but again pretty sure he has revealed his age before and was a fair bet that he had been vaccinated
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    IshmaelZ said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    Oh and Philip, here's that random bloke off twitter with FBPE in his handle spouting off about wine.

    What (tf) does he know, right?

    https://www.daniellambert.wine/
    We'll see.

    If it is "impossible" to buy EU wine after April then I am willing to make a £100 bet.

    I challenge anyone to pick a date* this year and I will go to my local supermarket or bottle store and look for a bottle of EU wine. If I can go to a bottle store or supermarket and pick up a bottle of EU wine then I'm happy to put a photograph of the bottle and my receipt here and you pay me £100. If I am incapable of finding any EU wines then I will pay you £100.

    Any takers? If I don't know what I'm talking about and it really is "impossible" to import wine after April, as opposed to a bit more inconvenient, then that should be guaranteed money in your pocket straight from a mug apparently. Who wants in?

    * Not Easter Sunday or Christmas Day, don't be a smartarse.
    You're not quite getting this whole thing are you?

    Of course it will be possible but choice will likely be diminished and prices likely higher.

    A poster-child Brexit success story.
    Thank you.

    I was arguing against the specific use of the word "impossible". "Of course it will be possible" means I was right.

    Thank you for agreeing with me.
    Well I'm sure that some suppliers may find it impossible.
    Don't they go into collective buying with other small suppliers though? It's not rocket science to split the fixed cost of paperwork over a larger order.
    If it becomes more competitive to buy larger containments instead of smaller ones then that's an adaptation not an impossibility.
    LOL you _really_ don't know how the wine trade (at the smaller end, for people such as Daniel Lambert) operates do you?

    Look it's no shame, you have to keep up with expertise on so many other sectors you can be forgiven for being absolutely pig ignorant on this one.
    If people want to deal with the small end that is on them as a niche.

    Bulk import, with eg a HGV being full of only on type of wine, and there are easily tens of thousands of bottles of wine in a single HGV. Bottled, not vat of liquid.

    Importing in bulk is an adjustment, not an impossibility and plenty of companies do it every single day.
    So life gets worse and more expensive, people go out of business, but hey, "that's on them." Serve them right for entrepreneurism. As I've said before I love the way this affected insouciance evaporates like snow in summer when you personally are affected because house prices are too high for you or someone threatens to take away your jab. Chill, it's all market forces.
    I've got no problem with house prices being high in a free market. If house prices are high in a free market then someone should buy some land, build a house on it and sell it which will bring house prices down. That is supply and demand, that is how a free market works.

    It is you that is against a free market in housing, not me.
    I am really not. I am not, for starters, a member of the Conservative, Unionist-but-we-are-never-quite-sure-which-Union and Propping Up House Prices At All Costs party. You seem confused about how politics works.
  • eek said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    The correct price of anything is the price someone is willing to pay for it.

    If the price of importing is higher than many consumers are willing to pay for it, the economics of businesses importing them is no longer viable. Its *possible* to import at a price that not enough consumers are prepared to pay. So it doesn't get imported.

    I can sketch this with crayons if you like. Its called "adding". The ape-men of the Indus understand this, you and Baldrick apparently do not.
    Are you trying to explain the concept of Supply and Demand to me? After I already mentioned it? 🤔

    It may be possible to set an import price that no imports will happen. That's not going to happen though.

    What may happen is that there is a marginal price change, so some things will be marginally more expensive, which means marginally less trade. That is supply and demand, that is not an impossibility to trade though.
    £1.50 for paperwork on a £7 bottle of wine isn't marginal. Heck even on a £15 bottle of wine that isn't marginal.
    You can get New World bottles of wine for £4 (£3.33+VAT) in the supermarket.

    Are you suggesting that 50% of the price of the wine is the paperwork. Or is it possible to do the paperwork for less than £1.50 per bottle - eg if you buy a large shipment instead of a small one?
    I thought you were an expert on wine?

    The reality is that most New World wine now is shipped in tanks and bottled in the UK...

    Those tanks are of course already used 24/7 365 days of the year so are not immediately available for new imports.
    Yes, that's surely the kind of innovation we'll see for EU wines as well, it's better for the environment too as you're no longer transporting heavy glass bottles by truck.

    I think the government made a huge mistake in not having a 12 month deal implementation period where businesses had time to digest the new rules and switch to new import and export methods over the year.
    Which is great on one level but does mean that small vineyards with limited supplies (i.e. the products the wine importer currently sells) will continue to be a red tape paperwork nightmare.
    I'm not sure that it does, if a small producer is selling 10,000 litres in the UK then I'm sure they can get a tanker to take it across the border to a bottling plant.
    And he can do that to supply his (say 8) different customers how?

    To avoid additional costs he needs to do that without any additional work required from himself and others and would need all 8 customers to accept the new process (for reference I'm assuming bottling costs in the EU and the UK would be identical).

    The simple fact is we have created additional work for people and

    1) all that work has to be paid for by us...
    2) a lot of firms are going to decide it's just not worth the hassle and focus on selling elsewhere.

    That's called adjustment. I don't think any Brexiteer here has denied there will be disruption and adjustments.
    A lot of Brexiteers are discovering that that disruption and adjustment equals their bankruptcy...

    And if they are annoyed about it you can imagine how those who voted to remain feel about being the bankruptcy that disruption and adjustment is doing for their business.
    Really?

    If that's the case why do FBPE loons on Twitter with EU flags in their handle keep getting quoted instead?

    Maybe the Brexiteers were too busy getting ready for Brexit and adjusting instead of whinging. Perhaps Darwin will ensure Brexiteer businesses survive?
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,220
    IanB2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Pagan2 said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Yep, difficult to disagree with any of that.

    I do wonder, however, if it is just possible that those who were so convinced that the EU were the adults, the reasonable ones whose views and positions should be given unstinting respect and deference through the long and tedious Brexit saga are taking the opportunity to reflect. It turns out that the EU is not an institution of laws after all. It is a bureaucratic mess, slow and incompetent, with a massive democratic deficit who cannot be relied upon to respect the views of its members (in this case Ireland and Art 16).

    Thank the lord we are out of it. Now let's move on together and make the best of our own path.

    As I keep pointing out, there is a world of difference between the EU pooing the bed over their vaccine fiasco and the EU stating a core negotiating position that the UK refused to accept. Nor are the EU the reason why we have chosen to leave the EEA. From the EU's self-imposed idiocy to our own - a wine importer whose business cannot function under the rules the UK government demanded be imposed.

    Some of the responses are quite funny as well. "Can't you import wine from elsewhere?" No - it doesn't exist. ROW doesn't produce anywhere near enough wine to replace EU volume. Err, "they need our customs. can't the frogs tell Macron to change his rules?" No, these are our rules. Insisted on by the UK government.

    https://twitter.com/DanielLambert29/status/1355437505642975233
    Your constant posting of anti brexit stories is rather pointless even more so after these last few days

    We are not going back so business will have to adapt
    I think we know that. The actual issue at the moment (if you read the tweets) is the paperwork requirements are making low volume imports impossible.

    Importing a container with a single product on it not a problem - 1 set of paperwork required.
    Start importing different product within a single container and the problems start to occur - as you need 1 set of paperwork per product and any 1 mistake on single form is enough to block the whole container from moving.
    Start splitting pallets into smaller orders and real problems begin. Remember 1 mistake blocks the entire container

    We've spent 30+ years with paperwork free exports and imports from the EU. The introduction of paperwork (a lot of which HMRC have zero people who understand it) is making things impossible. And Covid is sweeping this under the table.

    Now things will get easier - but they will get easier by people reducing the products they import and export - so less paperwork is required and less paperwork is the only way to avoid mistakes occurring.
    So people will adjust. That's not impossible.

    If people don't want to adjust, especially people with EU flags in their Twitter handle, that's on them not politics.

    The idea it is "impossible" to import wines from outside of a customs union would be a strange thought to anyone who likes New World wines.
    Thanks for again demonstrating your ignorance on the subject. I am not remotely interested in wine, but I was interested in the response to someone else who made the same point you did. The production volume of New World wine cannot possibly replace the volume lost from not being able to import viably from the EEA - the wine simply doesn't exist in anywhere near sufficient volume to be imported as a replacement.

    So yes, its impossible to replace wine that doesn't exist.
    The total production of wine in 2018 for the whole world was 292 million hecto litres or 292 billion litres.
    The eu produced last year 14 billion litres of wine.....the idea that the rest of the world doesnt produce enough wine to to replace the 4 billion litres we import is ....odd
    I think you are out by a factor of 10 on the meaning of hectolitre.
    Lo! And so a clever PB'er spots his gross error.

    A very useful behaviour to adopt - and to encourage in others - is, before doing any calculation, take a rough guess as to what the answer might be. It'll prevent those embarrassments where you cock up an Excel formula and come up with a dumb answer, which you share with others because it came out of the computer and so must be true.

    In the long run it'll also make you better at guessing.
    a hecto litre is 100 litres yes? so a figure of 292 million hectolitres - 292,000,000 x 100 ah yes 29.2 doh its early
    That was hard work.
    Brexit will see the return of the gallon, so not to worry.
  • Mr. Romford, at university I was almost the only psych undergraduate who didn't have a psych A-level (my qualification was a [poor] maths A-level). It proved surprisingly useful, with psychometric tests and other matters, and it was fascinating how bad many of the other students were with such things.

    F1: just rumours but people are muttering that Hamilton will shortly sign a contract, but it might not be as long as expected. We shall see.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,220

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    For rereference from the eurostat website to save people clicking

    In 2019, the sold production of wine (including sparkling wine, port and grape must) in the EU was around 16 billion (bn) litres. The largest wine producers were Italy, Spain and France, followed by Portugal, Germany and Hungary.

    Mr Pioneers has france alone doing 3 times the total for the EU so something dodgy somewhere

    I think you’ve got the decimal point in the wrong place. It’s 167 billion litres, 65% of world production.

    https://ec.europa.eu/info/food-farming-fisheries/plants-and-plant-products/plant-products/wine_en
    From the first para of that link:

    "The European Union is the world-leading producer of wine. Between 2014 and 2018, the average annual production was 167 million hectolitres. It accounts for 45% of world wine-growing areas, 65% of production, 60% of global consumption and 70% of exports."

    My table was from the wine industry's data lifted of a website.

    Don't worry Pagan - I once worked with a factory manager who didn't understand numbers either. Which is why when he kept expensively getting decimal points in the wrong place is why he was no longer the factory manager.
    Mr P, you are in good company with your decimal point. It can be a major hassle in medicine. I've posted before about a 2am argument with an anaesthetist who was convinced pharmacy had supplied him with syringes which were only 10% of the dose he required.
    Could be rather more than a hassle, if the error is an anaesthetist's.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,398

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    The correct price of anything is the price someone is willing to pay for it.

    If the price of importing is higher than many consumers are willing to pay for it, the economics of businesses importing them is no longer viable. Its *possible* to import at a price that not enough consumers are prepared to pay. So it doesn't get imported.

    I can sketch this with crayons if you like. Its called "adding". The ape-men of the Indus understand this, you and Baldrick apparently do not.
    Are you trying to explain the concept of Supply and Demand to me? After I already mentioned it? 🤔

    It may be possible to set an import price that no imports will happen. That's not going to happen though.

    What may happen is that there is a marginal price change, so some things will be marginally more expensive, which means marginally less trade. That is supply and demand, that is not an impossibility to trade though.
    £1.50 for paperwork on a £7 bottle of wine isn't marginal. Heck even on a £15 bottle of wine that isn't marginal.
    You can get New World bottles of wine for £4 (£3.33+VAT) in the supermarket.

    Are you suggesting that 50% of the price of the wine is the paperwork. Or is it possible to do the paperwork for less than £1.50 per bottle - eg if you buy a large shipment instead of a small one?
    I thought you were an expert on wine?

    The reality is that most New World wine now is shipped in tanks and bottled in the UK...

    Those tanks are of course already used 24/7 365 days of the year so are not immediately available for new imports.
    Yes, that's surely the kind of innovation we'll see for EU wines as well, it's better for the environment too as you're no longer transporting heavy glass bottles by truck.

    I think the government made a huge mistake in not having a 12 month deal implementation period where businesses had time to digest the new rules and switch to new import and export methods over the year.
    Which is great on one level but does mean that small vineyards with limited supplies (i.e. the products the wine importer currently sells) will continue to be a red tape paperwork nightmare.
    I'm not sure that it does, if a small producer is selling 10,000 litres in the UK then I'm sure they can get a tanker to take it across the border to a bottling plant.
    Max that is not how it works.

    It simply isn't.

    Plus what bottling plant, exactly?
    They can build some if its economic to do so.

    Or tens of thousands of litres can be carried in a single HGV in bottles. How many bottles of wine do you think make up a 24 pallet HGV? It isn't single digit bottles of wine.
    Which is where we started.

    1 container full of identical items = 1 set of paperwork.
    24 pallets with different items = 24 sets of paperwork
    24 pallets with 3 different products each = 72 sets of paperwork.

    Any issue with any single set of paperwork and that container isn't going anywhere.

    And each set of paperwork (even if 100% correct first time) takes time and money to create. Add 72 sets and it's a nightmare.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 36,001
    eek said:

    A lot of Brexiteers are discovering that that disruption and adjustment equals their bankruptcy...

    And if they are annoyed about it you can imagine how those who voted to remain feel about the bankruptcy that disruption and adjustment is doing to their business.

    https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1356146540734246912
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 38,865
    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    The correct price of anything is the price someone is willing to pay for it.

    If the price of importing is higher than many consumers are willing to pay for it, the economics of businesses importing them is no longer viable. Its *possible* to import at a price that not enough consumers are prepared to pay. So it doesn't get imported.

    I can sketch this with crayons if you like. Its called "adding". The ape-men of the Indus understand this, you and Baldrick apparently do not.
    Are you trying to explain the concept of Supply and Demand to me? After I already mentioned it? 🤔

    It may be possible to set an import price that no imports will happen. That's not going to happen though.

    What may happen is that there is a marginal price change, so some things will be marginally more expensive, which means marginally less trade. That is supply and demand, that is not an impossibility to trade though.
    £1.50 for paperwork on a £7 bottle of wine isn't marginal. Heck even on a £15 bottle of wine that isn't marginal.
    You can get New World bottles of wine for £4 (£3.33+VAT) in the supermarket.

    Are you suggesting that 50% of the price of the wine is the paperwork. Or is it possible to do the paperwork for less than £1.50 per bottle - eg if you buy a large shipment instead of a small one?
    I thought you were an expert on wine?

    The reality is that most New World wine now is shipped in tanks and bottled in the UK...

    Those tanks are of course already used 24/7 365 days of the year so are not immediately available for new imports.
    Yes, that's surely the kind of innovation we'll see for EU wines as well, it's better for the environment too as you're no longer transporting heavy glass bottles by truck.

    I think the government made a huge mistake in not having a 12 month deal implementation period where businesses had time to digest the new rules and switch to new import and export methods over the year.
    Which is great on one level but does mean that small vineyards with limited supplies (i.e. the products the wine importer currently sells) will continue to be a red tape paperwork nightmare.
    I'm not sure that it does, if a small producer is selling 10,000 litres in the UK then I'm sure they can get a tanker to take it across the border to a bottling plant.
    Max that is not how it works.

    It simply isn't.

    Plus what bottling plant, exactly?
    Hence the year implementation period, doing this on the fly is going to be very difficult, I don't deny that and as I said a deal implementation period would have been a good idea and it's going to be a huge cost to industry to not have that.

    However, if we can get tanker imports of wine from Chile and South Africa then I'm sure we can organise tanker imports from France and Italy.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    eek said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    The correct price of anything is the price someone is willing to pay for it.

    If the price of importing is higher than many consumers are willing to pay for it, the economics of businesses importing them is no longer viable. Its *possible* to import at a price that not enough consumers are prepared to pay. So it doesn't get imported.

    I can sketch this with crayons if you like. Its called "adding". The ape-men of the Indus understand this, you and Baldrick apparently do not.
    Are you trying to explain the concept of Supply and Demand to me? After I already mentioned it? 🤔

    It may be possible to set an import price that no imports will happen. That's not going to happen though.

    What may happen is that there is a marginal price change, so some things will be marginally more expensive, which means marginally less trade. That is supply and demand, that is not an impossibility to trade though.
    £1.50 for paperwork on a £7 bottle of wine isn't marginal. Heck even on a £15 bottle of wine that isn't marginal.
    You can get New World bottles of wine for £4 (£3.33+VAT) in the supermarket.

    Are you suggesting that 50% of the price of the wine is the paperwork. Or is it possible to do the paperwork for less than £1.50 per bottle - eg if you buy a large shipment instead of a small one?
    I thought you were an expert on wine?

    The reality is that most New World wine now is shipped in tanks and bottled in the UK...

    Those tanks are of course already used 24/7 365 days of the year so are not immediately available for new imports.
    Yes, that's surely the kind of innovation we'll see for EU wines as well, it's better for the environment too as you're no longer transporting heavy glass bottles by truck.

    I think the government made a huge mistake in not having a 12 month deal implementation period where businesses had time to digest the new rules and switch to new import and export methods over the year.
    Which is great on one level but does mean that small vineyards with limited supplies (i.e. the products the wine importer currently sells) will continue to be a red tape paperwork nightmare.
    I'm not sure that it does, if a small producer is selling 10,000 litres in the UK then I'm sure they can get a tanker to take it across the border to a bottling plant.
    And he can do that to supply his (say 8) different customers how?

    To avoid additional costs he needs to do that without any additional work required from himself and others and would need all 8 customers to accept the new process (for reference I'm assuming bottling costs in the EU and the UK would be identical).

    The simple fact is we have created additional work for people and

    1) all that work has to be paid for by us...
    2) a lot of firms are going to decide it's just not worth the hassle and focus on selling elsewhere.

    That's called adjustment. I don't think any Brexiteer here has denied there will be disruption and adjustments.
    A lot of Brexiteers are discovering that that disruption and adjustment equals their bankruptcy...

    And if they are annoyed about it you can imagine how those who voted to remain feel about being the bankruptcy that disruption and adjustment is doing for their business.
    Really?

    If that's the case why do FBPE loons on Twitter with EU flags in their handle keep getting quoted instead?

    Maybe the Brexiteers were too busy getting ready for Brexit and adjusting instead of whinging. Perhaps Darwin will ensure Brexiteer businesses survive?
    Like this brexiteer business

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/03/this-deal-is-enough-to-make-an-eel-squeal

    You are losing it. Even the entertainment value.
  • Excellent analysis, Cyclefree. Thank you.

    A long-term casualty will be the NI protocol, which won't survive in its current form.

    Both sides have seen fit to play fast and loose with it when it suits their politics, and it's obviously a bit barmy at the moment anyway, so I expect negotiations on rewriting it.. possibly rather soon.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,462
    IshmaelZ said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    Oh and Philip, here's that random bloke off twitter with FBPE in his handle spouting off about wine.

    What (tf) does he know, right?

    https://www.daniellambert.wine/
    We'll see.

    If it is "impossible" to buy EU wine after April then I am willing to make a £100 bet.

    I challenge anyone to pick a date* this year and I will go to my local supermarket or bottle store and look for a bottle of EU wine. If I can go to a bottle store or supermarket and pick up a bottle of EU wine then I'm happy to put a photograph of the bottle and my receipt here and you pay me £100. If I am incapable of finding any EU wines then I will pay you £100.

    Any takers? If I don't know what I'm talking about and it really is "impossible" to import wine after April, as opposed to a bit more inconvenient, then that should be guaranteed money in your pocket straight from a mug apparently. Who wants in?

    * Not Easter Sunday or Christmas Day, don't be a smartarse.
    You're not quite getting this whole thing are you?

    Of course it will be possible but choice will likely be diminished and prices likely higher.

    A poster-child Brexit success story.
    Thank you.

    I was arguing against the specific use of the word "impossible". "Of course it will be possible" means I was right.

    Thank you for agreeing with me.
    Well I'm sure that some suppliers may find it impossible.
    Don't they go into collective buying with other small suppliers though? It's not rocket science to split the fixed cost of paperwork over a larger order.
    If it becomes more competitive to buy larger containments instead of smaller ones then that's an adaptation not an impossibility.
    LOL you _really_ don't know how the wine trade (at the smaller end, for people such as Daniel Lambert) operates do you?

    Look it's no shame, you have to keep up with expertise on so many other sectors you can be forgiven for being absolutely pig ignorant on this one.
    If people want to deal with the small end that is on them as a niche.

    Bulk import, with eg a HGV being full of only on type of wine, and there are easily tens of thousands of bottles of wine in a single HGV. Bottled, not vat of liquid.

    Importing in bulk is an adjustment, not an impossibility and plenty of companies do it every single day.
    So life gets worse and more expensive, people go out of business, but hey, "that's on them." Serve them right for entrepreneurism. As I've said before I love the way this affected insouciance evaporates like snow in summer when you personally are affected because house prices are too high for you or someone threatens to take away your jab. Chill, it's all market forces.
    I am currently managing my wine purchases by splitting them between two large suppliers and a small, local independent. His range is smaller, but he has some interesting, and often 'different' wines; a very pleasant Corsican rosé, for example.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,992

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    Oh and Philip, here's that random bloke off twitter with FBPE in his handle spouting off about wine.

    What (tf) does he know, right?

    https://www.daniellambert.wine/
    We'll see.

    If it is "impossible" to buy EU wine after April then I am willing to make a £100 bet.

    I challenge anyone to pick a date* this year and I will go to my local supermarket or bottle store and look for a bottle of EU wine. If I can go to a bottle store or supermarket and pick up a bottle of EU wine then I'm happy to put a photograph of the bottle and my receipt here and you pay me £100. If I am incapable of finding any EU wines then I will pay you £100.

    Any takers? If I don't know what I'm talking about and it really is "impossible" to import wine after April, as opposed to a bit more inconvenient, then that should be guaranteed money in your pocket straight from a mug apparently. Who wants in?

    * Not Easter Sunday or Christmas Day, don't be a smartarse.
    You're not quite getting this whole thing are you?

    Of course it will be possible but choice will likely be diminished and prices likely higher.

    A poster-child Brexit success story.
    Thank you.

    I was arguing against the specific use of the word "impossible". "Of course it will be possible" means I was right.

    Thank you for agreeing with me.
    Well I'm sure that some suppliers may find it impossible.
    Don't they go into collective buying with other small suppliers though? It's not rocket science to split the fixed cost of paperwork over a larger order.
    If it becomes more competitive to buy larger containments instead of smaller ones then that's an adaptation not an impossibility.
    LOL you _really_ don't know how the wine trade (at the smaller end, for people such as Daniel Lambert) operates do you?

    Look it's no shame, you have to keep up with expertise on so many other sectors you can be forgiven for being absolutely pig ignorant on this one.
    If people want to deal with the small end that is on them as a niche.

    Bulk import, with eg a HGV being full of only on type of wine, and there are easily tens of thousands of bottles of wine in a single HGV. Bottled, not vat of liquid.

    Importing in bulk is an adjustment, not an impossibility and plenty of companies do it every single day.
    Which brings us back to Danny Lambert and his wines, whom you refused to take seriously.

    For small, independent wine merchants this is first of all not how they operate or their business model. It is like saying it's expensive to import BMW M340i's so why not import 20 Peugeot 306s instead?

    It is also expensive, time consuming, and might make the business unviable. Actually, given the market positioning of such businesses I would say it is "impossible". If they are to maintain their business at current levels.
    If their business model needs to change then change the business model. Get ready for Brexit.

    If it becomes cheaper for a company to handle bulk import of wine to then sell on to the wine merchants then that can be how its best to operate perhaps. Just because things are different and take some adjustment doesn't make them impossible.
    Philip you are making a category error in your assessment of the wine trade.

    I appreciate that compared with you I know very little because although I worked in the wine trade and I deal with a large number of independent wine merchants in my pursuit of getting blotto as much as possible (but not before midday on a Monday), you once shipped a pallet of wine so are an expert.

    But the wine trade at the level of Daniel Lambert does not work how you are saying it works. "Bulk import of wine" is not how these people operate. They source and procure parcels, some might have arrangements with producers, others stick to the labels.

    These are things that your proposed solution simply doesn't apply to. They are specialists selling high value products.

    If you say well Brexit so they must now adapt become bulk wine distributors selling Oz Cab Sauv for £4.99/btl bottled down the road (!!???) then I get it but you must appreciate that that is not their business model and many might go out of business because guess what? Aldi et al play that game much better than they ever could.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 49,868
    Scott_xP said:

    eek said:

    A lot of Brexiteers are discovering that that disruption and adjustment equals their bankruptcy...

    And if they are annoyed about it you can imagine how those who voted to remain feel about the bankruptcy that disruption and adjustment is doing to their business.

    https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1356146540734246912
    In just one month of post-Brexit trading, British logistics expert Jon Swallow has seen exports dive, prices rise and customers so desperate that he is practically offering a counselling service.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,600
    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:



    a) telling, your failing to address my point about CPTPP.

    Obviously nobody knows less about this briefcase wanker stuff than me as I've never had a proper job but CPCPPTPTPEPPEPE can't be done within the life of this government.
    "CPCPPTPTPEPPEPE can't be done within the life of this government"

    The membership aplication goes in today.

    Negotiations this spring.

    It would be a big catch for the CPCPPTPTPEPPEPE, as we would be the second largest economy in there after Japan. I'm kinda thinking it might be in their interests to, you know, expedite their processes to get us in? After all, they wouldn't want to be thought....what's the word I'm looking for - sclerotic?

    Liz Truss can quietly apply that humane killer to Rejoin this year.

    BOOOOM.
    I will yield to your superior levels of briefcase wankery on this matter.

    The UK may have to Brexit that other thing before rejoining the EU.

    First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then Richard Tice is standing as MP for Hartlepool.
    I look forward to you leading the charge for CPCPPTPTPEPPEPExit.....
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,164
    kamski said:

    Good Header. The EU commission has been rubbish. And, from a German perspective, Merkel has seemingly been absent, as she has been throughout this pandemic. I would have expected a bit more leadership from the German chancellor.

    From a wider perspective, and ignoring the current spat which I suspect will have little effect on the vaccination rollout (though obviously damaging to relationships and the Commission's reputation), how would things be if there had been no EU vaccine procurement? I guess some countries would have done better, others worse, but either way we'd probably have a massive mess with neighboring countries arguing over whose orders should be reduced the least.

    It makes sense for Britain to do its own thing being an island. It also makes sense for Britain to try and get the whole island of Ireland vaccinated, as that is where the only UK land border is.

    I wouldn't expect the UK to offer spare vaccines to the rest of the EU, though a gesture might be worth it as a way to try to get the UK included back into the "European solidarity" which it people think it has withdrawn itself from.

    If I hear the crap about 'solidarity' one more time. There is no issue with the EU scheme other than it has chosen to replace speed and variety at slightly higher cost with bureaucracy and delay at every possible juncture. Even had things gone smoothly the response has been slow. They have added to this the nasty little swipes against a vaccine purely because of its supposed 'english ' links providing fuel for anti-vax sentiment in an already sceptical population. Less slogans please and more action. Take your solidarity and place it where the sun cannot reach!
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 33,462
    edited February 2021
    Nigelb said:

    ydoethur said:

    Pagan2 said:

    For rereference from the eurostat website to save people clicking

    In 2019, the sold production of wine (including sparkling wine, port and grape must) in the EU was around 16 billion (bn) litres. The largest wine producers were Italy, Spain and France, followed by Portugal, Germany and Hungary.

    Mr Pioneers has france alone doing 3 times the total for the EU so something dodgy somewhere

    I think you’ve got the decimal point in the wrong place. It’s 167 billion litres, 65% of world production.

    https://ec.europa.eu/info/food-farming-fisheries/plants-and-plant-products/plant-products/wine_en
    From the first para of that link:

    "The European Union is the world-leading producer of wine. Between 2014 and 2018, the average annual production was 167 million hectolitres. It accounts for 45% of world wine-growing areas, 65% of production, 60% of global consumption and 70% of exports."

    My table was from the wine industry's data lifted of a website.

    Don't worry Pagan - I once worked with a factory manager who didn't understand numbers either. Which is why when he kept expensively getting decimal points in the wrong place is why he was no longer the factory manager.
    Mr P, you are in good company with your decimal point. It can be a major hassle in medicine. I've posted before about a 2am argument with an anaesthetist who was convinced pharmacy had supplied him with syringes which were only 10% of the dose he required.
    Could be rather more than a hassle, if the error is an anaesthetist's.
    It was, nearly. I was the on-call pharmacist, roused from sleep as I said at 2am and doing the calculations on a scrap of paper at my bedside. Convinced the chap he was wrong, fortunately, but went in in some concern the next morning.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,220
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    Oh and Philip, here's that random bloke off twitter with FBPE in his handle spouting off about wine.

    What (tf) does he know, right?

    https://www.daniellambert.wine/
    We'll see.

    If it is "impossible" to buy EU wine after April then I am willing to make a £100 bet.

    I challenge anyone to pick a date* this year and I will go to my local supermarket or bottle store and look for a bottle of EU wine. If I can go to a bottle store or supermarket and pick up a bottle of EU wine then I'm happy to put a photograph of the bottle and my receipt here and you pay me £100. If I am incapable of finding any EU wines then I will pay you £100.

    Any takers? If I don't know what I'm talking about and it really is "impossible" to import wine after April, as opposed to a bit more inconvenient, then that should be guaranteed money in your pocket straight from a mug apparently. Who wants in?

    * Not Easter Sunday or Christmas Day, don't be a smartarse.
    You're not quite getting this whole thing are you?

    Of course it will be possible but choice will likely be diminished and prices likely higher.

    A poster-child Brexit success story.
    Thank you.

    I was arguing against the specific use of the word "impossible". "Of course it will be possible" means I was right.

    Thank you for agreeing with me.
    Well I'm sure that some suppliers may find it impossible.
    Don't they go into collective buying with other small suppliers though? It's not rocket science to split the fixed cost of paperwork over a larger order.
    If it becomes more competitive to buy larger containments instead of smaller ones then that's an adaptation not an impossibility.
    LOL you _really_ don't know how the wine trade (at the smaller end, for people such as Daniel Lambert) operates do you?

    Look it's no shame, you have to keep up with expertise on so many other sectors you can be forgiven for being absolutely pig ignorant on this one.
    If people want to deal with the small end that is on them as a niche.

    Bulk import, with eg a HGV being full of only on type of wine, and there are easily tens of thousands of bottles of wine in a single HGV. Bottled, not vat of liquid.

    Importing in bulk is an adjustment, not an impossibility and plenty of companies do it every single day.
    Which brings us back to Danny Lambert and his wines, whom you refused to take seriously.

    For small, independent wine merchants this is first of all not how they operate or their business model. It is like saying it's expensive to import BMW M340i's so why not import 20 Peugeot 306s instead?

    It is also expensive, time consuming, and might make the business unviable. Actually, given the market positioning of such businesses I would say it is "impossible". If they are to maintain their business at current levels.
    I've made the point before, but the timing and details of the Brexit deal (while clearly better than no deal) display a definite f*ck-small-business attitude on the part of our government.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 42,992
    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    The correct price of anything is the price someone is willing to pay for it.

    If the price of importing is higher than many consumers are willing to pay for it, the economics of businesses importing them is no longer viable. Its *possible* to import at a price that not enough consumers are prepared to pay. So it doesn't get imported.

    I can sketch this with crayons if you like. Its called "adding". The ape-men of the Indus understand this, you and Baldrick apparently do not.
    Are you trying to explain the concept of Supply and Demand to me? After I already mentioned it? 🤔

    It may be possible to set an import price that no imports will happen. That's not going to happen though.

    What may happen is that there is a marginal price change, so some things will be marginally more expensive, which means marginally less trade. That is supply and demand, that is not an impossibility to trade though.
    £1.50 for paperwork on a £7 bottle of wine isn't marginal. Heck even on a £15 bottle of wine that isn't marginal.
    You can get New World bottles of wine for £4 (£3.33+VAT) in the supermarket.

    Are you suggesting that 50% of the price of the wine is the paperwork. Or is it possible to do the paperwork for less than £1.50 per bottle - eg if you buy a large shipment instead of a small one?
    I thought you were an expert on wine?

    The reality is that most New World wine now is shipped in tanks and bottled in the UK...

    Those tanks are of course already used 24/7 365 days of the year so are not immediately available for new imports.
    Yes, that's surely the kind of innovation we'll see for EU wines as well, it's better for the environment too as you're no longer transporting heavy glass bottles by truck.

    I think the government made a huge mistake in not having a 12 month deal implementation period where businesses had time to digest the new rules and switch to new import and export methods over the year.
    Which is great on one level but does mean that small vineyards with limited supplies (i.e. the products the wine importer currently sells) will continue to be a red tape paperwork nightmare.
    I'm not sure that it does, if a small producer is selling 10,000 litres in the UK then I'm sure they can get a tanker to take it across the border to a bottling plant.
    Max that is not how it works.

    It simply isn't.

    Plus what bottling plant, exactly?
    Hence the year implementation period, doing this on the fly is going to be very difficult, I don't deny that and as I said a deal implementation period would have been a good idea and it's going to be a huge cost to industry to not have that.

    However, if we can get tanker imports of wine from Chile and South Africa then I'm sure we can organise tanker imports from France and Italy.
    MAAAAXXXX!

    "Tanker imports of wine from France and Italy" is just not how that end of the market works.

    But I have said enough to both you and @Phil and I must away.

    Bon discussions.
  • eek said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    The correct price of anything is the price someone is willing to pay for it.

    If the price of importing is higher than many consumers are willing to pay for it, the economics of businesses importing them is no longer viable. Its *possible* to import at a price that not enough consumers are prepared to pay. So it doesn't get imported.

    I can sketch this with crayons if you like. Its called "adding". The ape-men of the Indus understand this, you and Baldrick apparently do not.
    Are you trying to explain the concept of Supply and Demand to me? After I already mentioned it? 🤔

    It may be possible to set an import price that no imports will happen. That's not going to happen though.

    What may happen is that there is a marginal price change, so some things will be marginally more expensive, which means marginally less trade. That is supply and demand, that is not an impossibility to trade though.
    £1.50 for paperwork on a £7 bottle of wine isn't marginal. Heck even on a £15 bottle of wine that isn't marginal.
    You can get New World bottles of wine for £4 (£3.33+VAT) in the supermarket.

    Are you suggesting that 50% of the price of the wine is the paperwork. Or is it possible to do the paperwork for less than £1.50 per bottle - eg if you buy a large shipment instead of a small one?
    I thought you were an expert on wine?

    The reality is that most New World wine now is shipped in tanks and bottled in the UK...

    Those tanks are of course already used 24/7 365 days of the year so are not immediately available for new imports.
    Yes, that's surely the kind of innovation we'll see for EU wines as well, it's better for the environment too as you're no longer transporting heavy glass bottles by truck.

    I think the government made a huge mistake in not having a 12 month deal implementation period where businesses had time to digest the new rules and switch to new import and export methods over the year.
    Which is great on one level but does mean that small vineyards with limited supplies (i.e. the products the wine importer currently sells) will continue to be a red tape paperwork nightmare.
    I'm not sure that it does, if a small producer is selling 10,000 litres in the UK then I'm sure they can get a tanker to take it across the border to a bottling plant.
    Max that is not how it works.

    It simply isn't.

    Plus what bottling plant, exactly?
    They can build some if its economic to do so.

    Or tens of thousands of litres can be carried in a single HGV in bottles. How many bottles of wine do you think make up a 24 pallet HGV? It isn't single digit bottles of wine.
    Which is where we started.

    1 container full of identical items = 1 set of paperwork.
    24 pallets with different items = 24 sets of paperwork
    24 pallets with 3 different products each = 72 sets of paperwork.

    Any issue with any single set of paperwork and that container isn't going anywhere.

    And each set of paperwork (even if 100% correct first time) takes time and money to create. Add 72 sets and it's a nightmare.
    I believe a price of £200 was quoted earlier per set of paperwork? So lets work with 1 HGV with 24 pallets of wine.

    There are 112 cases of wine in a pallet, 12 bottles per case. That's 1,334 bottles of wine per pallet.

    A HGV with 24 pallets has 32,256 bottles in the HGV.

    Even if all 24 pallets were unique, each with a different set of paperwork so 24 sets of paperwork @ £200 each then that would be 15p per bottle in paperwork costs. 15p != £1.50 per bottle.

    Import 24 pallets on a single set of paperwork and its ~0.6 pence per bottle.

    Put multiple pallets of the same wine in and the cost comes down. Choose to split pallets rather than buying whole pallets at once and the cost goes up. But we're talking pennies not pounds.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 11,798
    Pagan2 said:

    kjh said:

    Pagan2 said:

    kjh said:

    Pagan2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Yep, difficult to disagree with any of that.

    I do wonder, however, if it is just possible that those who were so convinced that the EU were the adults, the reasonable ones whose views and positions should be given unstinting respect and deference through the long and tedious Brexit saga are taking the opportunity to reflect. It turns out that the EU is not an institution of laws after all. It is a bureaucratic mess, slow and incompetent, with a massive democratic deficit who cannot be relied upon to respect the views of its members (in this case Ireland and Art 16).

    Thank the lord we are out of it. Now let's move on together and make the best of our own path.

    As I keep pointing out, there is a world of difference between the EU pooing the bed over their vaccine fiasco and the EU stating a core negotiating position that the UK refused to accept. Nor are the EU the reason why we have chosen to leave the EEA. From the EU's self-imposed idiocy to our own - a wine importer whose business cannot function under the rules the UK government demanded be imposed.

    Some of the responses are quite funny as well. "Can't you import wine from elsewhere?" No - it doesn't exist. ROW doesn't produce anywhere near enough wine to replace EU volume. Err, "they need our customs. can't the frogs tell Macron to change his rules?" No, these are our rules. Insisted on by the UK government.

    https://twitter.com/DanielLambert29/status/1355437505642975233
    Your constant posting of anti brexit stories is rather pointless even more so after these last few days

    We are not going back so business will have to adapt
    I think we know that. The actual issue at the moment (if you read the tweets) is the paperwork requirements are making low volume imports impossible.

    Importing a container with a single product on it not a problem - 1 set of paperwork required.
    Start importing different product within a single container and the problems start to occur - as you need 1 set of paperwork per product and any 1 mistake on single form is enough to block the whole container from moving.
    Start splitting pallets into smaller orders and real problems begin. Remember 1 mistake blocks the entire container

    We've spent 30+ years with paperwork free exports and imports from the EU. The introduction of paperwork (a lot of which HMRC have zero people who understand it) is making things impossible. And Covid is sweeping this under the table.

    Now things will get easier - but they will get easier by people reducing the products they import and export - so less paperwork is required and less paperwork is the only way to avoid mistakes occurring.
    So people will adjust. That's not impossible.

    If people don't want to adjust, especially people with EU flags in their Twitter handle, that's on them not politics.

    The idea it is "impossible" to import wines from outside of a customs union would be a strange thought to anyone who likes New World wines.
    Thanks for again demonstrating your ignorance on the subject. I am not remotely interested in wine, but I was interested in the response to someone else who made the same point you did. The production volume of New World wine cannot possibly replace the volume lost from not being able to import viably from the EEA - the wine simply doesn't exist in anywhere near sufficient volume to be imported as a replacement.

    So yes, its impossible to replace wine that doesn't exist.
    The total production of wine in 2018 for the whole world was 292 million hecto litres or 292 billion litres.
    The eu produced last year 14 billion litres of wine.....the idea that the rest of the world doesnt produce enough wine to to replace the 4 billion litres we import is ....odd
    That is clearly fake news.

    The total production figure looks about right.

    But the three biggest wine producing countries in the world are Italy, Spain and France, each accounting for 15-20% of the total. So it is self evident that the rest of your data are wrong.

    Australia, NZ, Chile etc are down at around 4% - they figure more prominently for British drinkers because the UK is already one of their principal importers.
    https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/EDN-20201119-2#:~:text=In 2019, the sold production,by Portugal, Germany and Hungary.

    https://www.bkwine.com/features/more/world-wine-production-reaches-record-level-2018-consumption-stable/

    Well go dispute with those people
    Did you actually read what you posted 😃
    which bit of the sold production of eu wine is 16 billions litres are you disputing.....a figure that widely differs from mr pioneers for which he didnt link to a source?
    Why don't you read the articles and just have a look at the nice pie charts and the percentages put in bold for French, Spanish and Italian and EU production and then have a good think about whether they are consistent with what you have stated.

    I mean it is not as if we are in the right ball park here are we? That should leap out at anyone posting this surely.

    But then 24 hours haven't passed since you claimed with certainty one of our posters had been vaccinated without any evidence whatsoever, but based upon an assumption of his age because you can't tell the difference between a joke and a serious post.

    Analytical skills not at the forefront or too quick to post. We all do it.
    In my defence at least I went to look at sources to see before I posted which is somewhat more than some do. And I did apologise to the poster last night but again pretty sure he has revealed his age before and was a fair bet that he had been vaccinated
    True and true in fairness to you.

    But a quick glance at the reports posted showed it was nonsense. As I said the figures were in bold for France, Spain and Italy and the EU. Each one made your quote obviously wrong. There was a pie chart also. And the report kept mentioning Europe as being the biggest production area.

    Re the poster. He had revealed his age, but the nature of the conversation implied he was probably lying for comic effect. I could be wrong but I would never have assumed he was actually 80.
  • Pulpstar said:

    Brom said:

    The news this morning from Inzaman Rashid on the dangers of covid to everyone, but perhaps more so the young or the BAME is well worth being widely publicised. May save a few more lives.

    26 year old Sky News correspondent parties with Kay Burley on the infamous night and gets suspended from his job for 3 months. Heads off to Dubai to escape media attention and get some winter sun. Returns at Christmas to see his family and tests positive on Dec 28th. Seriously ill alongside his parents who are now recovering but his dad may have long term irreversible effects. Good of him to warn everyone but incredible this chain of events happened in the first place.

    Hopefully Rashid's whole family will go down as "cases" and his father will be OK, but again it illustrates that this simply isn't

    ' OnLy ThE FLuUu '
    Pulpstar said:

    Brom said:

    The news this morning from Inzaman Rashid on the dangers of covid to everyone, but perhaps more so the young or the BAME is well worth being widely publicised. May save a few more lives.

    26 year old Sky News correspondent parties with Kay Burley on the infamous night and gets suspended from his job for 3 months. Heads off to Dubai to escape media attention and get some winter sun. Returns at Christmas to see his family and tests positive on Dec 28th. Seriously ill alongside his parents who are now recovering but his dad may have long term irreversible effects. Good of him to warn everyone but incredible this chain of events happened in the first place.

    Hopefully Rashid's whole family will go down as "cases" and his father will be OK, but again it illustrates that this simply isn't

    ' OnLy ThE FLuUu '
    There's a set of stocks in the centre of Winchcombe. They're for display purposes only of course but I've often thought they could still be usefully used for certain types of crime.

    Inzaman would be a good candidate. I wouldn't want people throwing things at him, or injuring him physically, but people ought to be able to go up to him and say 'What a silly feckless individual you are, Inzy', or words to that effect.
  • fox327fox327 Posts: 370
    edited February 2021
    eek said:

    TOPPING said:

    Vaccine anecdote:

    Friend, phlebotomist working in Addenbroke's.

    Plenty of frontline staff/colleagues being jabbed. Plenty of BAME such people refusing to be jabbed.

    And that is both a mystery and a problem.

    Why is it that BAME people seem less willing to be vaccinated, what is discouraging them and how do we resolve it.
    Currently everything is contingent on known unknowns: the effectiveness of the vaccines and the emergence of new variants of the virus.

    Other things being equal, however, proof of vaccination may eventually be requested for new members of staff of the NHS and care homes and for medical and nursing students, if it is shown that vaccines are effective at reducing transmission of the virus. This would be for the protection of co-workers and clients. Other employers may also then be given discretion to request this.
  • Mr. B, I'd guess it was more rampant ignorance combined with complacency than active malice, not that it makes a huge difference.

    We shouldn't let the good vaccine situation make us forget that the PM is a bloody incompetent.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677

    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:



    a) telling, your failing to address my point about CPTPP.

    Obviously nobody knows less about this briefcase wanker stuff than me as I've never had a proper job but CPCPPTPTPEPPEPE can't be done within the life of this government.
    "CPCPPTPTPEPPEPE can't be done within the life of this government"

    The membership aplication goes in today.

    Negotiations this spring.

    It would be a big catch for the CPCPPTPTPEPPEPE, as we would be the second largest economy in there after Japan. I'm kinda thinking it might be in their interests to, you know, expedite their processes to get us in? After all, they wouldn't want to be thought....what's the word I'm looking for - sclerotic?

    Liz Truss can quietly apply that humane killer to Rejoin this year.

    BOOOOM.
    I will yield to your superior levels of briefcase wankery on this matter.

    The UK may have to Brexit that other thing before rejoining the EU.

    First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then Richard Tice is standing as MP for Hartlepool.
    I look forward to you leading the charge for CPCPPTPTPEPPEPExit.....
    It's highly unlikely that I will live that long but I'll do what I can.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,204
    Lol just had a twitter strike against me due to suggesting a snowflake antivaxxer should skydive without a parachute.
  • IshmaelZ said:


    So life gets worse and more expensive, people go out of business, but hey, "that's on them." Serve them right for entrepreneurism. As I've said before I love the way this affected insouciance evaporates like snow in summer when you personally are affected because house prices are too high for you or someone threatens to take away your jab. Chill, it's all market forces.

    I've got no problem with house prices being high in a free market. If house prices are high in a free market then someone should buy some land, build a house on it and sell it which will bring house prices down. That is supply and demand, that is how a free market works.

    It is you that is against a free market in housing, not me.
    The issue you are going to have with that approach is that its not what red wall punters had in mind. They are expecting more choice at less cost, not far less choice at far higher cost.

    They won't say "ah yes, free markets in action" and vote Tory.
  • Wulfrun_PhilWulfrun_Phil Posts: 4,780
    edited February 2021
    Nigelb said:

    IanB2 said:

    Pagan2 said:

    IanB2 said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Pagan2 said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    Yep, difficult to disagree with any of that.

    I do wonder, however, if it is just possible that those who were so convinced that the EU were the adults, the reasonable ones whose views and positions should be given unstinting respect and deference through the long and tedious Brexit saga are taking the opportunity to reflect. It turns out that the EU is not an institution of laws after all. It is a bureaucratic mess, slow and incompetent, with a massive democratic deficit who cannot be relied upon to respect the views of its members (in this case Ireland and Art 16).

    Thank the lord we are out of it. Now let's move on together and make the best of our own path.

    As I keep pointing out, there is a world of difference between the EU pooing the bed over their vaccine fiasco and the EU stating a core negotiating position that the UK refused to accept. Nor are the EU the reason why we have chosen to leave the EEA. From the EU's self-imposed idiocy to our own - a wine importer whose business cannot function under the rules the UK government demanded be imposed.

    Some of the responses are quite funny as well. "Can't you import wine from elsewhere?" No - it doesn't exist. ROW doesn't produce anywhere near enough wine to replace EU volume. Err, "they need our customs. can't the frogs tell Macron to change his rules?" No, these are our rules. Insisted on by the UK government.

    https://twitter.com/DanielLambert29/status/1355437505642975233
    Your constant posting of anti brexit stories is rather pointless even more so after these last few days

    We are not going back so business will have to adapt
    I think we know that. The actual issue at the moment (if you read the tweets) is the paperwork requirements are making low volume imports impossible.

    Importing a container with a single product on it not a problem - 1 set of paperwork required.
    Start importing different product within a single container and the problems start to occur - as you need 1 set of paperwork per product and any 1 mistake on single form is enough to block the whole container from moving.
    Start splitting pallets into smaller orders and real problems begin. Remember 1 mistake blocks the entire container

    We've spent 30+ years with paperwork free exports and imports from the EU. The introduction of paperwork (a lot of which HMRC have zero people who understand it) is making things impossible. And Covid is sweeping this under the table.

    Now things will get easier - but they will get easier by people reducing the products they import and export - so less paperwork is required and less paperwork is the only way to avoid mistakes occurring.
    So people will adjust. That's not impossible.

    If people don't want to adjust, especially people with EU flags in their Twitter handle, that's on them not politics.

    The idea it is "impossible" to import wines from outside of a customs union would be a strange thought to anyone who likes New World wines.
    Thanks for again demonstrating your ignorance on the subject. I am not remotely interested in wine, but I was interested in the response to someone else who made the same point you did. The production volume of New World wine cannot possibly replace the volume lost from not being able to import viably from the EEA - the wine simply doesn't exist in anywhere near sufficient volume to be imported as a replacement.

    So yes, its impossible to replace wine that doesn't exist.
    The total production of wine in 2018 for the whole world was 292 million hecto litres or 292 billion litres.
    The eu produced last year 14 billion litres of wine.....the idea that the rest of the world doesnt produce enough wine to to replace the 4 billion litres we import is ....odd
    I think you are out by a factor of 10 on the meaning of hectolitre.
    Lo! And so a clever PB'er spots his gross error.

    A very useful behaviour to adopt - and to encourage in others - is, before doing any calculation, take a rough guess as to what the answer might be. It'll prevent those embarrassments where you cock up an Excel formula and come up with a dumb answer, which you share with others because it came out of the computer and so must be true.

    In the long run it'll also make you better at guessing.
    a hecto litre is 100 litres yes? so a figure of 292 million hectolitres - 292,000,000 x 100 ah yes 29.2 doh its early
    That was hard work.
    Brexit will see the return of the gallon, so not to worry.
    Luckily my VW-made Skoda anticipated Brexit 8 years ago, as it tells me my fuel consumption in mpg.

    I had a Renault Megane before that. It anticipated Macron because it was really crap.

    Thanks to Macron, VDL et al, next time I'll be looking to buy from a manufacturer that sources at least some of its production in the UK.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 71,220

    Mr. B, I'd guess it was more rampant ignorance combined with complacency than active malice, not that it makes a huge difference.

    We shouldn't let the good vaccine situation make us forget that the PM is a bloody incompetent.

    For those on the receiving end, there's not much difference between active malice, and not giving a damn.
  • kamskikamski Posts: 5,191
    felix said:

    kamski said:

    Good Header. The EU commission has been rubbish. And, from a German perspective, Merkel has seemingly been absent, as she has been throughout this pandemic. I would have expected a bit more leadership from the German chancellor.

    From a wider perspective, and ignoring the current spat which I suspect will have little effect on the vaccination rollout (though obviously damaging to relationships and the Commission's reputation), how would things be if there had been no EU vaccine procurement? I guess some countries would have done better, others worse, but either way we'd probably have a massive mess with neighboring countries arguing over whose orders should be reduced the least.

    It makes sense for Britain to do its own thing being an island. It also makes sense for Britain to try and get the whole island of Ireland vaccinated, as that is where the only UK land border is.

    I wouldn't expect the UK to offer spare vaccines to the rest of the EU, though a gesture might be worth it as a way to try to get the UK included back into the "European solidarity" which it people think it has withdrawn itself from.

    If I hear the crap about 'solidarity' one more time. There is no issue with the EU scheme other than it has chosen to replace speed and variety at slightly higher cost with bureaucracy and delay at every possible juncture. Even had things gone smoothly the response has been slow. They have added to this the nasty little swipes against a vaccine purely because of its supposed 'english ' links providing fuel for anti-vax sentiment in an already sceptical population. Less slogans please and more action. Take your solidarity and place it where the sun cannot reach!
    European solidarity is a real thing, though it might be misused. I have noticed its existence, even if you haven't. So you can stick your narrowminded blindness wherever you like.

    Lots of people feel that they are part of a European "family" and that the UK has chosen to leave. That is just how people feel. TBH most people are not very interested in what happens in the UK, which I think is a pity, but that is how it is now.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 13,677
    Pulpstar said:

    Lol just had a twitter strike against me due to suggesting a snowflake antivaxxer should skydive without a parachute.

    I once got a 12 hour ban for saying I wished the Duke of Edinburgh had died when he rammed that woman's Kia shitbox in his Disco.

    Why 12 hours? How the fuck did they come up with that number?
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,477
    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    The correct price of anything is the price someone is willing to pay for it.

    If the price of importing is higher than many consumers are willing to pay for it, the economics of businesses importing them is no longer viable. Its *possible* to import at a price that not enough consumers are prepared to pay. So it doesn't get imported.

    I can sketch this with crayons if you like. Its called "adding". The ape-men of the Indus understand this, you and Baldrick apparently do not.
    Are you trying to explain the concept of Supply and Demand to me? After I already mentioned it? 🤔

    It may be possible to set an import price that no imports will happen. That's not going to happen though.

    What may happen is that there is a marginal price change, so some things will be marginally more expensive, which means marginally less trade. That is supply and demand, that is not an impossibility to trade though.
    £1.50 for paperwork on a £7 bottle of wine isn't marginal. Heck even on a £15 bottle of wine that isn't marginal.
    You can get New World bottles of wine for £4 (£3.33+VAT) in the supermarket.

    Are you suggesting that 50% of the price of the wine is the paperwork. Or is it possible to do the paperwork for less than £1.50 per bottle - eg if you buy a large shipment instead of a small one?
    I thought you were an expert on wine?

    The reality is that most New World wine now is shipped in tanks and bottled in the UK...

    Those tanks are of course already used 24/7 365 days of the year so are not immediately available for new imports.
    Yes, that's surely the kind of innovation we'll see for EU wines as well, it's better for the environment too as you're no longer transporting heavy glass bottles by truck.

    I think the government made a huge mistake in not having a 12 month deal implementation period where businesses had time to digest the new rules and switch to new import and export methods over the year.
    LOL x2.

    "Shipped in tanks and bottled in the UK"?

    For the wine sold by small, independent wine merchants?

    Dear god Max don't jump on this bandwagon.
    An alternative would be importing it by the barrel, and filling it into carafes in-store. I'm not suggesting this is a blanket solution by the way, but it is something that I think will become increasingly popular regardless of import regulations.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 78,204
    Dura_Ace said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Lol just had a twitter strike against me due to suggesting a snowflake antivaxxer should skydive without a parachute.

    I once got a 12 hour ban for saying I wished the Duke of Edinburgh had died when he rammed that woman's Kia shitbox in his Disco.

    Why 12 hours? How the fuck did they come up with that number?
    Yep 12 hours seems to be the standard. American "cooler" system I think.
  • EndillionEndillion Posts: 4,976
    kamski said:

    felix said:

    kamski said:

    Good Header. The EU commission has been rubbish. And, from a German perspective, Merkel has seemingly been absent, as she has been throughout this pandemic. I would have expected a bit more leadership from the German chancellor.

    From a wider perspective, and ignoring the current spat which I suspect will have little effect on the vaccination rollout (though obviously damaging to relationships and the Commission's reputation), how would things be if there had been no EU vaccine procurement? I guess some countries would have done better, others worse, but either way we'd probably have a massive mess with neighboring countries arguing over whose orders should be reduced the least.

    It makes sense for Britain to do its own thing being an island. It also makes sense for Britain to try and get the whole island of Ireland vaccinated, as that is where the only UK land border is.

    I wouldn't expect the UK to offer spare vaccines to the rest of the EU, though a gesture might be worth it as a way to try to get the UK included back into the "European solidarity" which it people think it has withdrawn itself from.

    If I hear the crap about 'solidarity' one more time. There is no issue with the EU scheme other than it has chosen to replace speed and variety at slightly higher cost with bureaucracy and delay at every possible juncture. Even had things gone smoothly the response has been slow. They have added to this the nasty little swipes against a vaccine purely because of its supposed 'english ' links providing fuel for anti-vax sentiment in an already sceptical population. Less slogans please and more action. Take your solidarity and place it where the sun cannot reach!
    European solidarity is a real thing, though it might be misused. I have noticed its existence, even if you haven't. So you can stick your narrowminded blindness wherever you like.

    Lots of people feel that they are part of a European "family" and that the UK has chosen to leave. That is just how people feel. TBH most people are not very interested in what happens in the UK, which I think is a pity, but that is how it is now.
    I think part of the point is that the constant need to repeat "solidarity" etc provides us with a clue as to how much of it is really floating around.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited February 2021
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    What @Big_G_NorthWales seems oblivious to is that I am not arguing to rejoin the EU - that ship has sailed. What I am arguing - with evidence - is that the rules insisted on by the UK government have brought a significant number of industries to a stand.

    Brexit - leaving the EU - did not have to bring self-harm to our status as a global trading nation. Our government could have understood both how trade worked and the areas where the rules it blindly insisted would be fine would not be fine. Instead we have this.

    "We are not going back so business will have to adapt". In the case of the wine industry it will adapt by closing down. The other story I ready this morning was from major Norniron logistics firm McCulla, reporting in detail how the new rules has brought their industry to its knees. These companies will close without either rapid changes or long-term support. They "will have to adapt" by closing down.

    The new rules are unworkable. And this is the false dawn before we stop breaching WTO rules and start imposing them fully. They will either need to be renegotiated or we will see chunks of our economic output simply stop. That isn't an argument to rejoin the EU, its an argument to negotiate a trading deal that works.

    Sadly people like Big G never understood the difference between the EU and EEA. It is our departure from the latter which has so broken the food and drink industry.

    If they're so unworkable then how do we have so many New World wines available to drink? Is the old world seriously so sclerotic that we face a future of only New World wines if we're not in the EEA? Because I'm 100% OK with that even if that happens, but I don't believe it for one second.

    I think that's going to far and too unfair on the EU there, I don't believe its really that sclerotic as to be impossible to deal with - and that's coming from me!
    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    The issue is not that there isn't enough wine in the rest of the world, it's just that that wine is already being sold elsewhere and isn't available for us to buy.

    1-3 years time the market will have adjusted and we may be in a position to buy more wine from the RoW but for the moment the RoW production is being produced for the pre-existing markets and is (probably) given how most markets work already presold elsewhere.
    Have you never heard of the concepts of Supply and Demand?

    Prices may change, contracts may change, but the idea it is literally "impossible" to import wine whether from the EU or the Rest of the World is a lie.

    Harder to import EU wine? I believe that.
    More expensive to import EU wine? I believe that.
    Impossible to import EU wine? Lie, lie, lie.

    Impossible doesn't mean a touch more expensive or there's more paperwork.
    Oh and Philip, here's that random bloke off twitter with FBPE in his handle spouting off about wine.

    What (tf) does he know, right?

    https://www.daniellambert.wine/
    We'll see.

    If it is "impossible" to buy EU wine after April then I am willing to make a £100 bet.

    I challenge anyone to pick a date* this year and I will go to my local supermarket or bottle store and look for a bottle of EU wine. If I can go to a bottle store or supermarket and pick up a bottle of EU wine then I'm happy to put a photograph of the bottle and my receipt here and you pay me £100. If I am incapable of finding any EU wines then I will pay you £100.

    Any takers? If I don't know what I'm talking about and it really is "impossible" to import wine after April, as opposed to a bit more inconvenient, then that should be guaranteed money in your pocket straight from a mug apparently. Who wants in?

    * Not Easter Sunday or Christmas Day, don't be a smartarse.
    You're not quite getting this whole thing are you?

    Of course it will be possible but choice will likely be diminished and prices likely higher.

    A poster-child Brexit success story.
    Thank you.

    I was arguing against the specific use of the word "impossible". "Of course it will be possible" means I was right.

    Thank you for agreeing with me.
    Well I'm sure that some suppliers may find it impossible.
    Don't they go into collective buying with other small suppliers though? It's not rocket science to split the fixed cost of paperwork over a larger order.
    If it becomes more competitive to buy larger containments instead of smaller ones then that's an adaptation not an impossibility.
    LOL you _really_ don't know how the wine trade (at the smaller end, for people such as Daniel Lambert) operates do you?

    Look it's no shame, you have to keep up with expertise on so many other sectors you can be forgiven for being absolutely pig ignorant on this one.
    If people want to deal with the small end that is on them as a niche.

    Bulk import, with eg a HGV being full of only on type of wine, and there are easily tens of thousands of bottles of wine in a single HGV. Bottled, not vat of liquid.

    Importing in bulk is an adjustment, not an impossibility and plenty of companies do it every single day.
    Which brings us back to Danny Lambert and his wines, whom you refused to take seriously.

    For small, independent wine merchants this is first of all not how they operate or their business model. It is like saying it's expensive to import BMW M340i's so why not import 20 Peugeot 306s instead?

    It is also expensive, time consuming, and might make the business unviable. Actually, given the market positioning of such businesses I would say it is "impossible". If they are to maintain their business at current levels.
    If their business model needs to change then change the business model. Get ready for Brexit.

    If it becomes cheaper for a company to handle bulk import of wine to then sell on to the wine merchants then that can be how its best to operate perhaps. Just because things are different and take some adjustment doesn't make them impossible.
    Philip you are making a category error in your assessment of the wine trade.

    I appreciate that compared with you I know very little because although I worked in the wine trade and I deal with a large number of independent wine merchants in my pursuit of getting blotto as much as possible (but not before midday on a Monday), you once shipped a pallet of wine so are an expert.

    But the wine trade at the level of Daniel Lambert does not work how you are saying it works. "Bulk import of wine" is not how these people operate. They source and procure parcels, some might have arrangements with producers, others stick to the labels.

    These are things that your proposed solution simply doesn't apply to. They are specialists selling high value products.

    If you say well Brexit so they must now adapt become bulk wine distributors selling Oz Cab Sauv for £4.99/btl bottled down the road (!!???) then I get it but you must appreciate that that is not their business model and many might go out of business because guess what? Aldi et al play that game much better than they ever could.
    I never said they need to do bottling in the UK, that was someone else.

    They can import pallets at pennies per bottle. If the £200 price quoted earlier was correct then we're talking 15 pence per bottle of wine, even if every single pallet is unique.

    To put that into context alcohol duty on wine is £2.23 per bottle (£2.68 inc VAT).
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 52,600
    Dura_Ace said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Lol just had a twitter strike against me due to suggesting a snowflake antivaxxer should skydive without a parachute.

    I once got a 12 hour ban for saying I wished the Duke of Edinburgh had died when he rammed that woman's Kia shitbox in his Disco.

    Why 12 hours? How the fuck did they come up with that number?
    It was a time period that allowed enough time for you to reflect on the error of your ways/leave any ongoing problem to the guy on the next shift....
  • If that's the case why do FBPE loons on Twitter with EU flags in their handle keep getting quoted instead?

    Maybe the Brexiteers were too busy getting ready for Brexit and adjusting instead of whinging. Perhaps Darwin will ensure Brexiteer businesses survive?

    Perhaps part of the issue is that businesses were unable to "get ready for Brexit" when the government's own Border Operating Model failed to describe how the border would operate. The reason why January was so entertaining* was that on an almost daily basis new realities began to become clear that had not been warned during the "Check, change, go" adverts.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109011/coronavirus-covid19-death-rates-us-by-state/

    Six US states now over 2,000 deaths/m pop. No proper country has yet achieved this. Belgium 1,815/m.
  • All this additional paperwork...worth remembering back a few years.

    When the EU came up with their ridiculous rules for VAT on digital goods, where as a seller you had to collect the VAT at 28 different rates, act as the VAT policeman and do all the checking for origin of the purchaser and of course file all the paperwork for this stupid scheme.

    I own a digital business in the EU and if interviewed at the time I would have said very difficult to continue to do business there etc.

    Fairly quickly software was developed that did all this for you and we just hooked it into our systems.

    Also for really tiny suppliers they were able to leverage the tech of big platforms like Amazon to handle it for them.
  • Scott_xP said:

    eek said:

    A lot of Brexiteers are discovering that that disruption and adjustment equals their bankruptcy...

    And if they are annoyed about it you can imagine how those who voted to remain feel about the bankruptcy that disruption and adjustment is doing to their business.

    https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1356146540734246912
    Before Christmas I said that industry had assumed no deal and acted accordingly. And as the last paragraph of that notes, they were right to do so:

    "“The game has changed,” he said, adding that UK Plc had been based on the free flowing movement of goods. “This is a hard Brexit, this is as hard as you can get without no deal. And the consequence of that is, there’s just a lot to do."

    No deal would have added tariffs on top for everything as opposed to just some things. The damage is still done though thanks to the very large cost of trying everyone up in red tape.
This discussion has been closed.