Form an orderly queue
Oh cool, people in the UK get to pretend it’s World War 2 again, with rationing and shortages and all. Wot larks.
The government has appointed a minister to oversee the protection of food supplies through the Brexit process amid rising concerns about the effect of a no-deal departure from the European Union.
I saw this being passed around yesterday:
Top left, EU; lower right, Brexit.
Food industry insiders welcomed his appointment after warnings that delays of only half an hour at UK ports and the Irish border would risk one in 10 British firms going bankrupt.
One food industry business leader said: “The issue at the ports is a big threat. The UK always has been a net importer of food. If the ports don’t work then exporters will be struggling and importers will have a challenge too.”
Don’t worry; it’s only food.
Fears have risen amid the increasing likelihood of Britain crashing out of the EU without a deal in little more than six months time, after Theresa May failed to win support for her Brexit plan from European leaders and said both sides had reached an impasse.
Ministers have attempted to downplay concerns by suggesting they could relax efforts to collect border taxesto maintain the free movement of imports and exports in the event of no deal. However, food retailers have said such plans could still lead to a logjam on the UK side of the border as trucks get stuck trying to head back into the EU to pick up their next load.
Well, stock up on cans of tasteless white beans in tomato sauce.
Thems fightin’ words, Ophelia! Baked beans are manna from the gods. :-D
Seriously though, I voted Remain and one of the things that concerned me was just how much food the UK imported from the EU and what Brexit would mean for those imports. Concerns that were dismissed as scaremongering and Project Fear. Not so cocky now, those Brexiteers, eh?
Not only not manna they’re not baked! They’re called baked beans in the UK but they’re not; baked beans are a quite different dish, one that requires actual baking. Beans in tomato sauce are just stewed, not baked.
Of course it’s the Apocalypse, it’s Ragnarok, be very afraid. Another year 2k style fizzer perhaps? Why oh why would the UK starve if it left the EU?
That said, Britain will probably never leave the UK, the local plutocrats will never allow it. I’m not British and Brexit is irrelevant to my country, I don’t have an agenda, it’s just an entertaining circus. The British don’t know the difference between a plebiscite and a referendum. Presumably the plebs will vote correctly at the next ‘referendum’, or perhaps the one after that.
Ophelia, if you Americans can call chips ‘French fries’ despite the potatoes never having been to France, we can call our unbaked beans ‘baked’.
RJW, re. ‘The British don’t know the difference between a plebiscite and a referendum.. Just when I thought we were starting to get on! Now if you’d started that with ‘Most of..’ or even ‘The vast majority of…’ I could do naught but agree.
You’re right, though, it is bullshit. The idea that a half-hour delay at ports would bankrupt 1-in-10 companies is ludicrous; delays at ports is commonplace already and nobody suffers. Besides, if these delays are expected to be the norm, companies will simply factor them in to transport times. Such transparent scare stories are what swayed the referendum to start with, they don’t need to continue with them now they’ve won.
The thing that really annoyed me about the Brexit referendum was that it was proposed in order to give an indication of national public opinion, not as a definitive instruction for the Government to act upon. Considering how close the result was (had it been a general election, the result would have been a hung parliament), for the Conservatives to immediately announce they were going ahead with leaving shows that they wanted a ‘leave’ vote all along. It’s why they wooed the UKIP and BNP crowd so aggressively despite their initial claim that it wouldn’t neccessarily lead to us leaving the EU, but would help them better formulate future policy.
And yet still people wonder why I’d never trust a Conservative to so much as tell me what time it is, let alone trust one with anything important.
AofS
Point taken, I’ll concede that “the vast majority…”
The aspect of the entire Brexit debacle that baffles me is why the UK government didn’t just try ‘masterful inaction’ since the vote wasn’t legally binding. Your explanation that the Brexiters seized the initiative seems plausible. You have the Remainers’ ridiculous scare campaign versus the Brexiters’ imperial fantasies— the only response the UK will get from the ‘Commonwealth’ is the middle finger.
Many countries survive quite well outside the EU, it’s not the only game in town.
Good luck.
I actually doubt that even if it had been stated from the off that the vote would be binding the result would have been different. There seems to be too much apathy from the Left, and not only in the UK. There’s a kind of smug, ‘nobody’s stupid enough to fall for the Right’s nonsense’ attitude prevailing, and the voters aren’t turning out for what they believe will be a foregone conclusion. It led to a mess of a Tory government and Brexit here, it paved Trump’s path to power, it’s bringing the Right and Far Right to prominence across Europe, particularly in Germany and Eastern Europe, and one would expect that the latter two especially would be very wary enough of Right Wing politics to do everything they can to keep them from power.
We can certainly survive outside of the E.U. but at what cost? I’ll take those good luck wishes; I’ve a feeling we’ll need them.
AofS
I noticed a news text a few minutes ago. Apparently Boris has a ‘better Bexit’ plan, Teresa wil need to watch her back.
Oh, God! I just know that before long either Boris or Jacob Rees-Mogg (the living embodiment of the Beano comic character Walter the Softy, Dennis the Menace’s prime target) will be P.M. and then the shit will hit the fan. Mogg is highly educated and politically is just about to the left of Pol Pot, with a tightly controlled image of a quietly spoken, decent chap slightly baffled by modernity (think Thatcher, but an introvert version) whilst Boris is the opposite of Trump in as much as he is very intelligent yet projects an image of being pig-shit thick, but is pretty much his equal in bigotry; openly racist, misogynous, insults anybody and everybody, hates the poor, yadda, yadda. Whichever of these two sons of privilege win their personal tussle for the top job, it’ll be boom time for the wealthy and sod the rest, just as it was under Thatcher.
And the real kicker? Labour’s Blairite, Tory-lite members and Corbyn’s back-to grass roots supporters are too busy tearing the party apart to take notice of what’s happening and offer any real opposition. Just as with the Democrats and Trump, there has been chance after chance for Labour to hit hard at the Cons, but have let every opportunity go begging.
I’m very worried about a ‘no deal’ brexit and i also hate baked beans. But i remember that picture from 2 years ago and it annoyed me at the time. It’s sort of funny but it’s kind of elitist too. I voted remain but a lot of the people who voted to leave did so out of anger at the political establishment. The vote might not make sense but the anger is perfectly reasonable, and some of it comes from people who can’t afford duvel beer or chorizo sausage or might not even know what those are.
Whatever the UK ends up doing it should be for the benefit of ordinary, stewed-bean-drinking people. I know it’s harder to take a photograph of worker’s rights, but they’re more important than the contintental food that Guardian readers can’t do without. Also, baked beans aside, the UK should be proud of its food, especially cheese, ale, whisky, cakes etc.
Come now! There will probably still be toast on which to serve the beans. Dry, tasteless toast…
@#10: how can toast be dry when covered in tomato sauce?
It’s a funny and oddly moving picture, and of course Brexit is nuts (and hopefully, as we say in my office, ‘abortive work’), but to be fair we have excellent local meat and dairy, and extremely excellent local beer; I’d be happy to live on these and what I grow in my allotment….