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Crisis Management: EU-style – politicalbetting.com

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  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518
    Pagan2 said:

    No one seems to have commented yet so I will

    AZN have found 9 million doses.....

    Sorry did AZN just have them lying around unused...if not those 9 million doses are from what someone else was going to receive unless I am misunderstanding... anyone care to explain?

    “I canna do it Cap’n”.

    Probably they’ve just shaved it off their “under promise/over deliver” reserve
  • 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.
    ahahaha - there is a glut in wine producing countries - even in Denmark I can buy a drinkable bottle of wine for about £7 - the idea wine is not available from outside the EU is just risible - California has massive overproduction to the tune of tens of thousands of acres. If the big producers in Spain and France can't organise some paperwork I would be pretty amazed - unless you think they are too stupid to sell into one of their most lucrative markets.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    edited February 2021
    Important no doubt - but a current priority?

    https://twitter.com/scotgov/status/1356165400044720133?s=20

    See replies for “Joyous & Civic”
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,961
    A superb header. I took the Sunday Times yesterday, hoping for some, er, insight into the events in the EU over the past week. Nothing a patch on this.

    One thing you did miss out (to be included for the extra humour added to the whole sorry episode): the EU's inability to publish a redacted document without a link to the full text, showing you everything they didn't want you to see....
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    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.
  • eek 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.
    I would go and read the thread - there isn't enough available New World wine to replace the EU imports.

    And the issue is mainly the one I've pointed out all month - why should I continue to purchase from you when other options are easier.

    Which is why the UK is now (note now not back in 2019 when it made sense to do so) telling companies to set up EU subsidiaries so that the paperwork is hidden away internally and stock is sent direct from a warehouse in the EU.
    Sorry but I'm not going to take the word of some random person on Twitter with an EU flag in their handle that there isn't enough wine in the world.

    Setting up PO Box offices in the EU if it is a solution that works is a good adaptation. Businesses find their way around regulations better than people give them credit for.
    Absolutely. We can ignore the opinions on wine made by a man who has spent 29 years importing wines because Philip is more of an expert on the subject than he is.
    Not at all. We can ignore the opinions on wine from this Twitter EU fanatic with an EU flag on his handle because Philip has spent 21 years legally buying New World wines from outside of the EEA. Not counting the years I spent illegally drinking alcohol.

    You don't need to be in the EEA to import wine.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    eek 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.
    I would go and read the thread - there isn't enough available New World wine to replace the EU imports.

    And the issue is mainly the one I've pointed out all month - why should I continue to purchase from you when other options are easier.

    Which is why the UK is now (note now not back in 2019 when it made sense to do so) telling companies to set up EU subsidiaries so that the paperwork is hidden away internally and stock is sent direct from a warehouse in the EU.
    Sorry but I'm not going to take the word of some random person on Twitter with an EU flag in their handle that there isn't enough wine in the world.

    Setting up PO Box offices in the EU if it is a solution that works is a good adaptation. Businesses find their way around regulations better than people give them credit for.
    Absolutely. We can ignore the opinions on wine made by a man who has spent 29 years importing wines because Philip is more of an expert on the subject than he is.
    Not at all. We can ignore the opinions on wine from this Twitter EU fanatic with an EU flag on his handle because Philip has spent 21 years legally buying New World wines from outside of the EEA. Not counting the years I spent illegally drinking alcohol.

    You don't need to be in the EEA to import wine.
    Why can I import 20millions litres of the stuff today for delivery in March?
  • FishingFishing Posts: 4,557
    Dura_Ace said:



    We are not going back so business will have to adapt

    The UK weren't leaving for years until they did. Rejoin is going to take some time to coalesce as a political program but it's going to happen.

    It's worth doing purely on the grounds that tories won't like it.
    What stupid logic.

    I hope not meant seriously.

    Like those hoping Boris would die of COVID six months ago.
  • Carnyx said:

    Opening this week's copy of The Grocer. Editorial points out that as bad as things are it gets massively worse on 20th April when any food containing ingredients of animal origin will need vet-approved health certificates to export. Which includes the tins of rice pudding and packs of chocolate digestives so beloved of British economic migrants expats on the Costas who simply won't be able to buy them any more.

    So presumably they can't order them by courier, or load up the Volvo when they drive down each year? They'd have to get them from the supermarket or deli, which will probably say "foutez-ca pour un jeu des soldats" at the extra price and hassle and just not bother stocking it except at lower levels and higher price?
    There are several specialist UK goods to EU exporters who supply many of the EU based stores (Carrefour) as an example who stock a bay of foreign food - same as with UK supermarkets here having a bay of polish imports.

    Health certificates are the killer. <£200 a pop per item. So you need to be exporting an awful lot of McVities Chocolate Digestives to make it worth the bother.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631

    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
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    edited February 2021
    DougSeal said:

    Worrying...


    Housebound elderly have 'slipped through cracks' in Covid jabs rollout

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/31/housebound-elderly-have-slipped-cracks-covid-jabs-rollout/


    It calls for mobile jabbing units. I thought these were already operational?

    It worrying for those concerned but, being harsh I accept, the loneliness and isolation of being elderly and housebound does at least give you protection in and of itself. Being in a care home is far more dangerous.
    My lonely, isolated, housebound aunt was told by her GP that there would be household calls and she was on the list to receive one of those. No idea on timings.

    That said as you note, it's not as if she is raring to go skiing in Austria. The major risk she faces is her carer who comes in daily (big risk) and the bloke who delivers her wine every other week (smaller risk).
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,961
    Dura_Ace said:

    Dura_Ace said:



    We are not going back so business will have to adapt

    The UK weren't leaving for years until they did. Rejoin is going to take some time to coalesce as a political program but it's going to happen.

    It's worth doing purely on the grounds that tories won't like it.
    Once we are in CPTPP, that will be the bolt from the humane killer through the skull of "rejoin". We aren't going to leave that trade grouping to go back to the fragrant embrace of the EU Commission. Especially if the US returns to CPTPP.

    There's a clear economic case to join CPTPP. But it's worth doing purely on the grounds that Europhiles won't like it.
    I can remember when your oft repeated line was "Which hospitals will you close to pay for rejoining?"

    Presumably the 400bn quid of borrowing that followed slightly took the steam out of that position.
    a) telling, your failing to address my point about CPTPP.

    b) your retort is saying "fuck it, what's a few more borrowed tens of billions?", when the next ten years are going to be all about "shit - how do we reduce debt by a few more tens of billions?". Weak. Very weak.

    Good to know the hosptials thing struck home though. Ta.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Having lived in Switzerland for over a year and visited many, many times I can assure everyone that it is absolutely possible to import wine from the EU to non EEA countries such as Switzerland. Anyone saying otherwise is talking absolute horseshit.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    kingbongo 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.
    ahahaha - there is a glut in wine producing countries - even in Denmark I can buy a drinkable bottle of wine for about £7 - the idea wine is not available from outside the EU is just risible - California has massive overproduction to the tune of tens of thousands of acres. If the big producers in Spain and France can't organise some paperwork I would be pretty amazed - unless you think they are too stupid to sell into one of their most lucrative markets.
    Absolutely. We voted Brexit to rid ourselves of those fancy-schmancy sovereignty-repressing french wines.

    Good thing too, I say. Let's get that California air bridge going.
  • eek 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.
    I would go and read the thread - there isn't enough available New World wine to replace the EU imports.

    And the issue is mainly the one I've pointed out all month - why should I continue to purchase from you when other options are easier.

    Which is why the UK is now (note now not back in 2019 when it made sense to do so) telling companies to set up EU subsidiaries so that the paperwork is hidden away internally and stock is sent direct from a warehouse in the EU.
    Sorry but I'm not going to take the word of some random person on Twitter with an EU flag in their handle that there isn't enough wine in the world.

    Setting up PO Box offices in the EU if it is a solution that works is a good adaptation. Businesses find their way around regulations better than people give them credit for.
    Absolutely. We can ignore the opinions on wine made by a man who has spent 29 years importing wines because Philip is more of an expert on the subject than he is.
    Philip IS an expert on, oh, can anyone help me out here lol? Philip, what are you expert on?
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,961
    TOPPING said:

    DougSeal said:

    Worrying...


    Housebound elderly have 'slipped through cracks' in Covid jabs rollout

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/31/housebound-elderly-have-slipped-cracks-covid-jabs-rollout/


    It calls for mobile jabbing units. I thought these were already operational?

    It worrying for those concerned but, being harsh I accept, the loneliness and isolation of being elderly and housebound does at least give you protection in and of itself. Being in a care home is far more dangerous.
    My lonely, isolated, housebound aunt was told by her GP that there would be household calls and she was on the list to receive one of those. No idea on timings.

    That said as you note, it's not as if she is raring to go skiing in Austria. The major risk she faces is her carer who comes in daily (big risk) and the bloke who delivers her wine every other week (smaller risk).
    Be gentle when you break it to her that there will be no wine to deliver....
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,883
    eek said:


    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    He's the 180wpm autodidactic polymath the country needs right now.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    TOPPING said:

    DougSeal said:

    Worrying...


    Housebound elderly have 'slipped through cracks' in Covid jabs rollout

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/31/housebound-elderly-have-slipped-cracks-covid-jabs-rollout/


    It calls for mobile jabbing units. I thought these were already operational?

    It worrying for those concerned but, being harsh I accept, the loneliness and isolation of being elderly and housebound does at least give you protection in and of itself. Being in a care home is far more dangerous.
    My lonely, isolated, housebound aunt was told by her GP that there would be household calls and she was on the list to receive one of those. No idea on timings.

    That said as you note, it's not as if she is raring to go skiing in Austria. The major risk she faces is her carer who comes in daily (big risk) and the bloke who delivers her wine every other week (smaller risk).
    Be gentle when you break it to her that there will be no wine to deliver....
    LOL
  • 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
    Hadn't realised that the UK was the only market for American wine.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    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/
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631

    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.
    Or maybe someone steps in and imports container loads of wine from the eu then wholesales them to small wine sellers?

    You have constantly banged on about this yet everyone is still seeing stock in supermarkets....your predictions have not come to pass
  • 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.
    So the consumer pays an increase in cost, or the importer buys larger loads instead of smaller ones. Neither of those is "impossible".

    Inconvenient and impossible are not the same thing.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    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
    It's more an issue of timing - 4 billion litres of wine isn't sat there waiting for a customer (as I said before a lot of it will be sold before it's even bottled up and often before it's even harvested).

    Market adjustment takes time
  • 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.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,961

    AZ's contract with the EU may be subject to Belgian law. But AZ's contract with the UK government is subject to British law, and an EU-based court won't be able to direct AZ to disregard its provisions and redirect vaccines.

    British law? What is this beast? Laws of England (and Wales) I imagine.

    Best governing law clause I ever heard of was one that said "The applicable law shall be the law of all right-thinking countries."

    Man, I would have loved to see that litigated!
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631

    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
    Hadn't realised that the UK was the only market for American wine.
    didnt claim it was I was pointing out that the eu producing 14 out of the 292 billion litres of wine made in the world every year makes it somewhat of a minnow in the world wine industry. Your assertion was the world doesnt make enough to replace it. I am also fairly sure that of the 4 billion litres we import a fair amount is already sourced outside the eu....we aren't going to be starved of wine
  • IanB2 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
    You seem to be missing the point that we had (and have) a range of choices whilst being outside the EU, and the choice the government has made is proving catastrophic for many (particularly smaller) import and exporting businesses.

    Perhaps, safely retired, you don't care - but your last sentence is glib and unhelpful.
    If we want to trade freely including joining the TPP we cannot be in the single market and customs union

    My last sentence is a statement of reality and snide comments about being retired and not caring is unworthy
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,153
    Dura_Ace said:

    eek said:


    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    He's the 180wpm autodidactic polymath the country needs right now.
    One certainly needs to bne an expert in carrots and choccy eggs these days to be a lorry driver -

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/31/eight-days-for-carrots-to-get-to-belfast-with-complex-brexit-checks

    "It is day eight in a depot in Lymm just outside Warrington, Cheshire and a lorry carrying frozen carrots and mixed herbs is still waiting for clearance to board a ferry from Birkenhead to Belfast.

    Six separate customers, supermarkets and corner stores have other consignments on truck, all stuck in Lymm because the paperwork for a single pallet of carrots is missing key information.

    Hundreds of miles away in Lisburn in Northern Ireland, the haulage firm’s operations team have had no luck in persuading the British supplier that the carrots that were ordered on 27 December are now, in the third week in January, classed as an export and must be accompanied by a litany of documents and certificates before the trailer can be cleared to board the ferry at Birkenhead
    [...]

    Summerton has two lorries delayed in Dublin because of the words “drumsticks” and “eggs” appeared in the paperwork. They were given the all clear after it was clarified that the drumsticks were not chicken but Swizzels sweets and the eggs were Cadbury’s Creme Eggs."
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited February 2021
    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.
  • Pagan2 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!
    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.
    Or maybe someone steps in and imports container loads of wine from the eu then wholesales them to small wine sellers?

    You have constantly banged on about this yet everyone is still seeing stock in supermarkets....your predictions have not come to pass
    Do you understand what a "warehouse" is? We are still burning our way through the massive stockpiles that were crushed into the UK in December. We're eating and drinking our way though it and not importing more on remotely the scale needed. At least thats what the wholesalers and the hauliers report with facts. What would then know.
  • IanB2 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
    You seem to be missing the point that we had (and have) a range of choices whilst being outside the EU, and the choice the government has made is proving catastrophic for many (particularly smaller) import and exporting businesses.

    Perhaps, safely retired, you don't care - but your last sentence is glib and unhelpful.
    If we want to trade freely including joining the TPP we cannot be in the single market and customs union

    My last sentence is a statement of reality and snide comments about being retired and not caring is unworthy
    If you really care, why are you objecting to the problems of British businesses even being heard publicly? The only reason I can think of is caring more about the image of the govt than the realities of businesses.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    eek 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.
    I would go and read the thread - there isn't enough available New World wine to replace the EU imports.

    And the issue is mainly the one I've pointed out all month - why should I continue to purchase from you when other options are easier.

    Which is why the UK is now (note now not back in 2019 when it made sense to do so) telling companies to set up EU subsidiaries so that the paperwork is hidden away internally and stock is sent direct from a warehouse in the EU.
    Sorry but I'm not going to take the word of some random person on Twitter with an EU flag in their handle that there isn't enough wine in the world.

    Setting up PO Box offices in the EU if it is a solution that works is a good adaptation. Businesses find their way around regulations better than people give them credit for.
    Absolutely. We can ignore the opinions on wine made by a man who has spent 29 years importing wines because Philip is more of an expert on the subject than he is.
    Philip IS an expert on, oh, can anyone help me out here lol? Philip, what are you expert on?
    I think Philip is what you get when the Government operates on the basis that we don't need experts anymore.

    Thank God they ignored that rule when it came to vaccine procurement.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,284
    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.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,094
    edited February 2021
    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.
    Wine imports from, for example, Australia have already increased dramatically and the UK is now number three, only a shade behind the US, in importing Australian wine (with China way out in front). Compare the numbers with our EU wine imports and you see the problem - our top five by £m are France at about 750, Italy at about 700, then Oz, NZ and Spain each at about 250. Our taste for fizzy stuff is fulfilled almost entirely the EU. In total we're the second biggest wine importing country in the world, and it is glib to suggest that the massive chunk that comes from the EU can simply be purchased from somewhere else without upending the entire market.
  • 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.
  • Carnyx said:

    Opening this week's copy of The Grocer. Editorial points out that as bad as things are it gets massively worse on 20th April when any food containing ingredients of animal origin will need vet-approved health certificates to export. Which includes the tins of rice pudding and packs of chocolate digestives so beloved of British economic migrants expats on the Costas who simply won't be able to buy them any more.

    So presumably they can't order them by courier, or load up the Volvo when they drive down each year? They'd have to get them from the supermarket or deli, which will probably say "foutez-ca pour un jeu des soldats" at the extra price and hassle and just not bother stocking it except at lower levels and higher price?
    That would be smuggling, n'est-ce pas?
  • 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.
  • BromBrom Posts: 3,760
    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.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited February 2021
    Carnyx said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    eek said:


    @Philip_Thompson are you in the wine trade now?

    He's the 180wpm autodidactic polymath the country needs right now.
    One certainly needs to bne an expert in carrots and choccy eggs these days to be a lorry driver -

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/31/eight-days-for-carrots-to-get-to-belfast-with-complex-brexit-checks

    "It is day eight in a depot in Lymm just outside Warrington, Cheshire and a lorry carrying frozen carrots and mixed herbs is still waiting for clearance to board a ferry from Birkenhead to Belfast.

    Six separate customers, supermarkets and corner stores have other consignments on truck, all stuck in Lymm because the paperwork for a single pallet of carrots is missing key information.

    Hundreds of miles away in Lisburn in Northern Ireland, the haulage firm’s operations team have had no luck in persuading the British supplier that the carrots that were ordered on 27 December are now, in the third week in January, classed as an export and must be accompanied by a litany of documents and certificates before the trailer can be cleared to board the ferry at Birkenhead
    [...]

    Summerton has two lorries delayed in Dublin because of the words “drumsticks” and “eggs” appeared in the paperwork. They were given the all clear after it was clarified that the drumsticks were not chicken but Swizzels sweets and the eggs were Cadbury’s Creme Eggs."
    That was what I was using earlier.

    For want of missing paperwork on a small part of a load a whole container is sat going nowhere with the rest of the load rapidly becoming worthless as it expires.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884
    rcs1000 said:

    https://twitter.com/KwasiKwarteng/status/1356148565807149058

    Ummm, I'm a big fan of Kwasi, but Valneva isn't going to be ready until the last quarter of 2021, so I'm not entirely sure why we're doing this.

    It may include a vaccine tweaked for new variant(s). I (and many others) suspect vaccination for covid won't stop at n=1 (or if pedantic 1 or 2 depending on vaccine).
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Pagan2 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!
    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.
    Or maybe someone steps in and imports container loads of wine from the eu then wholesales them to small wine sellers?

    You have constantly banged on about this yet everyone is still seeing stock in supermarkets....your predictions have not come to pass
    Do you understand what a "warehouse" is? We are still burning our way through the massive stockpiles that were crushed into the UK in December. We're eating and drinking our way though it and not importing more on remotely the scale needed. At least thats what the wholesalers and the hauliers report with facts. What would then know.
    Any idea when these stock piles are going to run out. I have a feeling it's going to be in April which means the real problems will be occurring just as we try to return to normal with the people most at risk vaccinated.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    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.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,153

    Carnyx said:

    Opening this week's copy of The Grocer. Editorial points out that as bad as things are it gets massively worse on 20th April when any food containing ingredients of animal origin will need vet-approved health certificates to export. Which includes the tins of rice pudding and packs of chocolate digestives so beloved of British economic migrants expats on the Costas who simply won't be able to buy them any more.

    So presumably they can't order them by courier, or load up the Volvo when they drive down each year? They'd have to get them from the supermarket or deli, which will probably say "foutez-ca pour un jeu des soldats" at the extra price and hassle and just not bother stocking it except at lower levels and higher price?
    That would be smuggling, n'est-ce pas?
    In the courier package/Volvo. Pas du tout, not if they pay for the vetinerary certs.

    I'm reminded of the last time I travelled across a phyto- and biosanitary border. Adelaide Airport. Every bit of food, every odd apple had to be left on the plane, etc., or binned in the special bins, before an inspection with spaniels sniffing around. My baggage was opened and my footwear demanded by the customs chap when he realised I came from southern Scotland - ie sheep country. Fortunately I had foreseen this and scrubbed my walking boots and Ms C's thoroughly. But ...
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,883



    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.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884

    Worrying...


    Housebound elderly have 'slipped through cracks' in Covid jabs rollout

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/31/housebound-elderly-have-slipped-cracks-covid-jabs-rollout/


    It calls for mobile jabbing units. I thought these were already operational?

    Neighbour of my mother-in-law was visited by a nurse to administer the vaccine as she was house bound (although she was at that time in hospital elsewhere) so clearly some areas are doing this.
  • 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?
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,094
    edited February 2021
    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.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited February 2021

    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.
  • 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.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Vaccine anecdote:

    Friend, phlebotomist working in Addenbroke's.

    Plenty of frontline staff/colleagues being jabbed. Plenty of BAME such people refusing to be jabbed.
  • 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.

  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631

    Pagan2 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!
    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.
    Or maybe someone steps in and imports container loads of wine from the eu then wholesales them to small wine sellers?

    You have constantly banged on about this yet everyone is still seeing stock in supermarkets....your predictions have not come to pass
    Do you understand what a "warehouse" is? We are still burning our way through the massive stockpiles that were crushed into the UK in December. We're eating and drinking our way though it and not importing more on remotely the scale needed. At least thats what the wholesalers and the hauliers report with facts. What would then know.
    Well to pick an item I buy that I know hasnt been sitting in a warehouse since before we finally left....italian wild rocket....no shortage
  • 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.

    I most certainly do know the difference between the EU and EEA and we may as well be a full member as being part detached.

    Brexit as it has been agreed has happened and new markets will open and old ones change

    This last week has shown the EU up as a protectionist self centred cabal, that has managed to unite all parties in Ireland against it and angered the Canadians, Japanese and South Korea along with many others

    It has also cemented brexit.

    Our exports will find new markets across the globe while EU countries realise it is time for far more autonomy, indeed their electorate will demand it

    The EU and UVDL have 'Raternered' the EU brand
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited February 2021
    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?
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    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.

    I most certainly do know the difference between the EU and EEA and we may as well be a full member as being part detached.

    Brexit as it has been agreed has happened and new markets will open and old ones change

    This last week has shown the EU up as a protectionist self centred cabal, that has managed to unite all parties in Ireland against it and angered the Canadians, Japanese and South Korea along with many others

    It has also cemented brexit.

    Our exports will find new markets across the globe while EU countries realise it is time for far more autonomy, indeed their electorate will demand it

    The EU and UVDL have 'Raternered' the EU brand
    You make an assumption there that our exports will find new markets.

    Do you have any evidence for that assumption as most companies already exported worldwide - I've never met one who turns down an order (unless the client is an arse).
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631
    edited February 2021
    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
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,883



    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?

    Getting a strong Mr. Logic vibe off this.
  • rcs1000 said:

    Where is everyone?

    I'm here.

    And yes, I do agree. Who wouldn't?

    Top article by Cyclefree. It puts substance and detail into everything most of us would have felt instinctively.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    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.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    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.
  • eek said:

    eek 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.
    I would go and read the thread - there isn't enough available New World wine to replace the EU imports.

    And the issue is mainly the one I've pointed out all month - why should I continue to purchase from you when other options are easier.

    Which is why the UK is now (note now not back in 2019 when it made sense to do so) telling companies to set up EU subsidiaries so that the paperwork is hidden away internally and stock is sent direct from a warehouse in the EU.
    Sorry but I'm not going to take the word of some random person on Twitter with an EU flag in their handle that there isn't enough wine in the world.

    Setting up PO Box offices in the EU if it is a solution that works is a good adaptation. Businesses find their way around regulations better than people give them credit for.
    Absolutely. We can ignore the opinions on wine made by a man who has spent 29 years importing wines because Philip is more of an expert on the subject than he is.
    Philip IS an expert on, oh, can anyone help me out here lol? Philip, what are you expert on?
    I think Philip is what you get when the Government operates on the basis that we don't need experts anymore.

    Thank God they ignored that rule when it came to vaccine procurement.
    Perhaps it was a typo. Experts were fine. It was exports and imports we didnt need?
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,094
    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
    I am not going to bother. Your suggestion that the EU produces only 5% of world wine is laughable, and dishonest.

  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631

    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
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,724

    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.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    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.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    eek said:

    eek 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.
    I would go and read the thread - there isn't enough available New World wine to replace the EU imports.

    And the issue is mainly the one I've pointed out all month - why should I continue to purchase from you when other options are easier.

    Which is why the UK is now (note now not back in 2019 when it made sense to do so) telling companies to set up EU subsidiaries so that the paperwork is hidden away internally and stock is sent direct from a warehouse in the EU.
    Sorry but I'm not going to take the word of some random person on Twitter with an EU flag in their handle that there isn't enough wine in the world.

    Setting up PO Box offices in the EU if it is a solution that works is a good adaptation. Businesses find their way around regulations better than people give them credit for.
    Absolutely. We can ignore the opinions on wine made by a man who has spent 29 years importing wines because Philip is more of an expert on the subject than he is.
    Philip IS an expert on, oh, can anyone help me out here lol? Philip, what are you expert on?
    I think Philip is what you get when the Government operates on the basis that we don't need experts anymore.

    Thank God they ignored that rule when it came to vaccine procurement.
    Perhaps it was a typo. Experts were fine. It was exports and imports we didnt need?
    POTD?
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,961
    edited February 2021
    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.
  • 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.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    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
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    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.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    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 '
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631
    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
  • eek 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
    It's more an issue of timing - 4 billion litres of wine isn't sat there waiting for a customer (as I said before a lot of it will be sold before it's even bottled up and often before it's even harvested).

    Market adjustment takes time
    There might be quite a lot of Australian wine looking for a home:

    China slaps up to 200% tariffs on Australian wine

    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55097100
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124

    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.

    In Spain they announced yesterday a dekivery of 52K Moderna vaccines with another 800k by the end of February. With luck that might get us to 2m by then in a country of 46m. Not to forget that we have over 700 cases discovered so far of queue jumping by military generals, local mayors and at least one Bishop! Spain is quite high up the EU league table on vaacinations completed. The one word version is : shambles.
  • kjhkjh Posts: 10,468
    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 😃
  • 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.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631
    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
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,288

    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 was told long ago by the well renowned Wine writer John Radford, sadly now deceased that a bottle of wine at ,£10 is likely to be infinitely better than one at £5 , because nearly all of the cost of wine at £5 is taken up by taxes shipping costs and the like. IIRC, he said the value of the wine in the £5 was about 30p... that's why cheap wine is usually best used for resurfacing your alloys.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    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.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,094
    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.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 66,768
    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
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    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.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631
    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?
  • 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.

    I most certainly do know the difference between the EU and EEA and we may as well be a full member as being part detached.

    Brexit as it has been agreed has happened and new markets will open and old ones change

    This last week has shown the EU up as a protectionist self centred cabal, that has managed to unite all parties in Ireland against it and angered the Canadians, Japanese and South Korea along with many others

    It has also cemented brexit.

    Our exports will find new markets across the globe while EU countries realise it is time for far more autonomy, indeed their electorate will demand it

    The EU and UVDL have 'Raternered' the EU brand
    You understand the difference and then spend the rest of the post attacking the EU. What do you mean "part detached?" The EEA is separate to the EU. A completely different thing.

    Please stop saying "I know" then posting in a way that proves that you don't.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    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.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    eek 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
    It's more an issue of timing - 4 billion litres of wine isn't sat there waiting for a customer (as I said before a lot of it will be sold before it's even bottled up and often before it's even harvested).

    Market adjustment takes time
    There might be quite a lot of Australian wine looking for a home:

    China slaps up to 200% tariffs on Australian wine

    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55097100
    Given that for the Chinese wine is a Veblen good I suspect all that's done is wonders for the Chinese Government's coffers.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 8,631
    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
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124
    Roger said:
    The gallic sense of humour is clearly a little out of sorts right now...
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    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.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,165
    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.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    edited February 2021
    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.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,094
    edited February 2021
    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.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    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.
  • OllyTOllyT Posts: 4,911
    edited February 2021

    Dura_Ace said:



    We are not going back so business will have to adapt

    The UK weren't leaving for years until they did. Rejoin is going to take some time to coalesce as a political program but it's going to happen.

    It's worth doing purely on the grounds that tories won't like it.
    There were sceptic movements for four decades, and on the right significant ones for nearly three decades by the time of the referendum.

    Never say never but frankly there's too much water under the bridge in my eyes for rejoin to ever be plausible. For one thing, even if we were to attempt a Hokey Cokey Brexit I don't think they'd take us back. There is a significant attitude in France especially that Charles de Gaulle was right and it was a mistake to let Britain in. I'm sure an independent Scotland would be welcomed back, but the English? No.
    We will not rejoin simply because any attempt to do so will be vetoed by at least 1 country. That is the sad reality, we really have burnt our bridges, the referendum decision was really irrevocable and whilst that is what Farage and the Tory right always wanted I doubt all the people who voted leave appreciated that. It doesn't matter if Brexit turns out to have been a huge mistake, we are stuck with it.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    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.
  • Can Philip please enlighten us as to why he keeps making the strawman argument that it will still be possible to import wine from the EU. We know that - who said it wasn't?

    On second thoughts, don't enlighten us, it will spoil the comedy act.
This discussion has been closed.