Yup, the UK right now is blaming everyone but themselves (or at least the papers are). There was fury about Belgian authorities taking away sandwiches etc from UK lorry drivers. I also read that someone in the UK got really annoyed that they had to queue up in the 'Outside EU' line....
Unfortunately I think we'll have to feel the pain for a while before in convinces anyone, but that pain is probably going to all get blamed on Coronavirus for the foreseeable future so it may take some time.
True but I meant the newspapers more than people. Personally Covid will ride the storm for most of these consequences up until it can longer do so but I imagine there would be some new deals and processes in place by then. Well I hope at least...
There was fury about Belgian authorities taking away sandwiches etc from UK lorry drivers
That happened once and people were right to be furious because the Dutch customs guy was a dick. No rule requires him to confiscate the lunch of lorry drivers and then say "Welcome to Brexit". It's that kind of nasty backstabbing pettiness that makes EU ideology so deeply unattractive that the UK voted to leave.
Nonetheless it's hilarious that so far despite the EU's best efforts to create as many problems as possible via "work to rule" type approaches, the media focuses on that. The EU-loving media class spent years telling people that if the UK dared to leave this horrible organisation there'd be immediate shortages of medicine. Now they have to hype up stories about dickish border guards whilst desperately trying to hide the fact that literally weeks after Brexit happened there are medicine shortages in the EU. People who argued against Brexit have been wrong about so many things so far I shouldn't be surprised but that one still takes the biscuit.
> No rule requires him to confiscate the lunch of lorry drivers and then say "Welcome to Brexit"
Actually, a rule does require him to confiscate any meat product that someone might try to bring into the EU [1] (incidentally I believe that the USA have the same rule), which is what happened: It was a ham sandwich.
If you watch the video the driver was very surprised. Personally I took the customs guy's reply "welcome to Brexit" as a humorous but factual and to the point explanation.
The goal of those rules is to stop people importing meat and selling it, not workers eating their lunch.
Look, this is very simple: if the EU's rules require confiscating the lunch of people who are trying to do business, then the rules are wrong and should be fixed. Blaming Brexit or saying "the USA does it too" isn't a great answer when it'd be so easy to fix this.
I think the main thing I've been learning about import/export rules in/out of the EU in the past few weeks is how much life must have been sucking for years for people trying to trade with us who aren't physically in Europe. A huge number of the rules that are tripping people up are stuff that's just taken to an absurd bureaucratic extreme, like the guys who couldn't sell their fish because the Latin name on a form had a spelling error, or the others who needed to translate their product description into every single European language before they could put their goods on a lorry.
The EU could easily fix all these things and make the lives of not only Brits but everyone else easier too, but the so-called single market is basically the only argument they have for why a country should join the EU. The EU has created a perverse incentive for itself to make selling things to it as convoluted and painful as possible. That is ultimately bad for everyone, but especially for people who live and work in member states.
That's like saying a personal baggie of cocaine is for lunch therefore you should not confiscate it. If it's on the list of no-entry then it's on there for a reason.
You should probably ask your countrymen to be less batshit at least for a moment. It's not as much as that there's no news anywhere else, it's just that Americans are sucking up all of the oxygen.
This is not something I or any other sane American can fix. It will take generations to root out this nonsense. Until parents/communities stop teaching their children bigotry and racism and scarcity mindset are good - we will lose this battle. It starts with the kids.
GP is a reflection of the current political state of affairs: to feel schadenfreude, you need that us-vs-them mentality, and GP mentions feeling schadenfreude like it’s the most natural thing ever.
The only feeling that’s triggered in me is being sorry for normal UK folks.
And, I think we will really know after a couple of years if this was a “mistake”. Being in the EU feels often like a “mistake”, too. I am not thinking my country should leave, but I’d love to see a major reform making the EU much lighter, less bureaucratic and focused on core topics instead of being this gigantic monster that’s deciding which popups I need to see.
Look up the actual numbers, chances are that you’ll find the actual EU bureaucracy is nimbler and more cost-effective than your national one, per-head. The EU budget is tiny.
The choice of matters discussed at EU level is sadly due to the agenda of national states, for the major part; in a lot of cases it’s actually what they don’t feel brave enough to touch but still think “something should be done about”, so the EU provides plausible deniability. If you feel this is not to your likes, complain to your MEPs and your national MPs.
Personally I think some issues won’t be solved until we have more European authority rather than less; a bit like the US ended up moving most powers to the federal government during its first 150 years.
> Look up the actual numbers, chances are that you’ll find the actual EU bureaucracy is nimbler and more cost-effective than your national one, per-head. The EU budget is tiny.
This might very well be true. However, it is not only about costs, is it? I really doubt that the cost-benefit ratio is on the same level as my national one.
When you bring "benefit" into the equation, inevitably we enter the political sphere, and then everything is debatable and somewhat linked to one's priorities. Personally, just the effort in industrial and commercial standardization across the continent is worth that money, let alone the increased cooperation and power effects.
Just support your country negotiating opt outs of things you don't like. That's one thing I thought really worked about the EU, when we were in we had opt outs on all sorts of things. Schengen, the Euro, various employment legislation, it was very flexible. The only things we were 'forced' into were a few marginal issues like the details of the contents of labels on tin cans and such. I thought two speed Europe, really multi-speed Europe worked pretty well. It's been rather sad watching so many Brexiteers complaining about EU regulations and agreements we weren't even part of.
It would be a bureaucratic mess, that multi-speed Europe. The whole point is that the rules are the same everywhere so you don't need red tape between countries.
The EU really needs to get better at educating everyone what it actually does and why it exists. How much money they spend every year and how much the EU actually costs every citzen in Europe on average.
It will probably help, but let's not forget that every politicians in the UK was blaming the EU for any unpopular law they passed, rightly or wrongly. The british press was no better.
The SNP has already announced that they will hold another independence referendum should they win a majority in the Scottish Parliament in Mays elections - which seems highly likely:
The current narrative in the uk media is that the EU have failed to plan the Covid Vaccines effectively as they insisted doing it as a single block, and that the UK has done much better as we were no longer tied to them and could move much quicker.
If there is any truth to that it's a big vindication of Brexit and I say that as a remain voter.
