I heard the headline on the radio this morning when I woke up. I heard "Food prices to rise 5% because..............." and my mind went into 'autofill' mode because of the NLP undertaken by the media over the last 2 years to expect to hear "of Brexit". I was astonished when I heard "summer heatwave". I was genuinely surprised to hear this, such is the daily tales of doom from Sky, BBC, ITV and The Duke.
Well, if we are to have summers like that, let it be NO DEAl for good Only reason I want to retire to Spain is the warmth...so bring on global warming too
I have a theory on the heatwave Extreme remainers have now realised that free trade/wto/no deal is now going to happen. The outrage sent up huge amounts of hot air which coincidentally, was timed with our sudden heat wave.
"For us in Nigeria agriculture is a vital sector. It employs 70 per cent of the workforce and the 76 million acres dedicated to it covers a third of our land. And yet time and again we are hit by EU tariffs on products such as sugar cane and rice. This is aimed at protecting European producers, often for products which are not farmed in Britain. Sugar cane from Nigeria faces a 115.4 per cent tariff while if we refine it for human consumption it becomes 375.6 per cent. Impossible to trade. Rice, maize and other cereals face tariffs of more than 50 per cent. This is an EU protection racket which drives up prices in Britain and deliberately holds back developing nations. The poorest in my country and yours pay the highest price for this". https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/1008586/brexit-news-eu-uk-nigeria-trade-latest
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/brex...s-plan/ar-BBMxpTM?li=BBoPWjQ&ocid=mailsignout Barnier going to do a flounce? Let's hope so. End the "negotiation" charade, switch to WTO with immediate effect and leave the 40 billion in tax payer's pockets where it belongs.
a bag dancing you mean? anyhoo, i feel i need to say. thank you kind sirs. https://twitter.com/Dr_PhilippaW/status/1034408905252765696
This piece deliberately avoids mentioning quotas. Quotas are agreed quantities of various products which can be imported into the EU customs union area tariff-free each year from various countries. Most of those products are in practice imported within the quota, and thus the tariff percentages are never applied in practice to any goods. The tariff percentages which the Daily Express likes to mention are hypothetical or fall-back arrangements - although the Express always falsely implies the tariffs are actually applied in practice and are somehow "unfair". A future UK outside the customs union would be faced with the options of either imposing a similar regime of quotas and tariffs, or allowing an unlimited quantity of cheap products to flood in and put UK producers out of business. The Express, of course, never indicates which of those options it prefers.
I wonder what you might mean by "... market to function properly"? If a cheap producer (for example Brazilian sugar) were allowed unlimited access without tariffs thus putting all European sugar producers out of business, would that count as "properly"? Why would that be a preferable outcome?
So you are happy for the EU to artificially keep prices up then, to protect expensive EU producers/refiners and stop them having to compete, good for you. Shame about all those in poverty that could do with good food at less cost, which you must also be happy with. Personally, I'd rather have good food at a price anyone can afford, whether living in a high rise on benefits of a 3 story townhouse in Chelsea.
Nothing in the world can make it as cheap to produce sugar in Europe as in Brazil. It is not a question of competing - it is a question of do we want to maintain a capacity to produce sugar in Europe (including UK), or do we want to shut it down and rely entirely on imports. That is a political decision, obviously. The EU has taken a political decision to maintain capacity, and to keep consumer prices down by means of agricultural subsidies. If you would favour a different policy, such as abolishing tariffs, or quotas, or subsidies, or the sugar beet industry, by all means argue for that policy. But you might have the honesty to acknowledge the adverse consequences of the policy you advocate. By the way, sugar is just one example. Similar issues and considerations apply to many other categories of products. New Zealand lamb, anyone?
