In that wondrous ‘Sunny Uplands’ as we revel in the promised bonanza of Boris Johnson’s ‘Titanic success’ we are just coming to terms with the added ‘perks’ of “Get Brexit Dung.” What a massive foul smelling pile of steaming dung it is now that we are forced to deal with Boris’s horse shit! From the highpoint of our ‘Sovereign’ euphoria, bringing us down to earth with the latest unforseen Tory turd piling poop on our parade, is the London Economics Article entitled, “Brexit: Reactions as Mastercard to increase fees for UK purchases from EU” Joe Mellor warns us that, “The fall-out from Brexit is beginning to filter through to every day lives. Now Mastercard is set to increase charges to merchants, five fold, when UK users make purchases from the European Union. The EU brought in a cap in 2015 amid fears over hidden fees costing companies hundreds of millions of euros, meaning higher prices for consumers. “It has sparked fears that consumer prices could rise if merchants choose to pass on those costs to the end user.”
Mellor says that, “This is likely to occur on items not available from UK retailers. For example, transactions with airlines, hotels, car rentals and holiday firms based in the EU could fall foul of the new increase. The credit card giant attributed the move to the UK’s decision to leave the EU. In response Daily Mirror associate editor Kevin McGuire Tweeted: ‘Taking back control to increase prices: Will mobile roaming charges return now credit card costs are up because Britons are no longer protected by an EU cap? Well done, Brextremists’. Chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Fair Business Banking, Kevin Hollinrake, said the change was ‘alarming’. He added: ‘This smacks of opportunism and I would urge the regulators to step in as a matter of urgency to ensure that financial institutions do not use Brexit as an opportunity to hike up costs that consumers will ultimately bear.’ The change affects the ‘interchange’ fees Mastercard sets on behalf of big banks, so that its customers can use their payment networks.”
Mellor reports that, “From October, Mastercard said it would increase these fees to 1.5% on every transaction, up from 0.3%.” That is clasic opportunistic price gouging, but I doubt this Tory Government will do anything to protect the public from this mighty banking giant. Naomi Smith Tweeted: “More proof that costs rise because of Brexit. ‘Mastercard will increase fees more than fivefold when a British shopper uses a debit or credit card to buy from an EU-based company’.” Danial Thomas of the Financial Times Tweeted: “Post #brexit MasterCard @Mastercard raises fees fivefold in EU-U.K. transactions (0.3% to 1.5%) now freed from EU-imposed cap on intra EU sales. Cue fury. @Visa not moved yet, but not ruled out.” Edwin Hayward Tweeted: “Mastercard is raising its fees on EU purchases made by holders of UK credit cards from 0.3% to 1.5%. Another Brexit dividend, because we no longer fall under the EU-wide Interchange Fee Regulation that used to cap the fee at 0.3%.” Chris Giles Tweeted: “Onwards and upwards* * for fees and red tape.”
In another London Economic Article entitled, “Relocate to EU to dodge Brexit bureaucracy, officials tell firms,” Henry Goodwin says that, “British businesses are being encouraged by government trade advisers to set up separate companies inside the EU to dodge new charges. British businesses struggling to export to the continent are being encouraged by government trade advisers to set up separate companies inside the European Union to get around extra Brexit charges, paperwork and taxes. UK small businesses are reportedly being instructed by officials working for the Department for International Trade (DIT) that the easiest way to circumvent mounting border issues and VAT problems is to register new firms within the EU single market, which Britain left on 1 January. The heads of two businesses left in disarray by Brexit told the Observer that they were following DIT’s advice, and had already decided to register new companies in the EU in the coming weeks. Many others reported receiving the same advice.”
Goodwin reports that, “Andrew Moss, head of Horizon Retail Marketing Solutions, based in Ely, Cambridgeshire, is registering a European company in the Netherlands in the coming weeks on the advice of a senior government adviser. That means his firm, which sells packaging and marketing displays to customers in the UK and EU – will begin laying off staff in the UK, and taking on people in the Netherlands. Referring to his discussions with a DIT official, Moss said: ‘This guy talked complete sense. What I said to him was, have I got another choice [other than to set up a company abroad]? He confirmed that he couldn’t see another way. ‘He told me that what I was thinking of doing was the right thing, that he could see no other option. He did not see this as a teething problem. He said he had to be careful what he said, but he was very clear’.”
Goodwin says that, “Another businessman has decided to follow suit, setting up a new company in the Netherlands for the same reasons. Geoffrey Betts, managing director of Stewart Superior Ltd, a Marlow office supplies firm, said: ‘When the government said it had secured free trade, it was obvious it was nothing of the sort.’ New charges on moving goods, VAT problems and more bureaucracy had created an ‘administrative nightmare’, he added. Relocating operations into the EU will mean British companies can avoid cross-border delays and costs on every consignment they send, and avoid VAT problems plaguing post-Brexit trade. ‘Totally avoidable increase in cost’ With the impact of leaving the single market becoming increasingly clear, it emerged on Saturday that British boozers could end up paying up to £1.50 extra per bottle on many European wines while choosing from a reduced range because of post-Brexit paperwork.” That will go down well as Brits try to drown out their Brexit blues with plonk!
According to Goodwin, “Importers said the cost of new customs declarations combined with higher haulage prices would hit UK drinks in the pocket, while flat-rate costs per shipment would push wholesalers to offer a narrower variety of wine. ‘We are looking at a totally avoidable increase in the cost of wine across the board,’ Jason Millar, a director at wholesaler Theatre of Wine, told the Financial Times. ‘Many importers will cut wines, not because they don’t believe in them . . . but because they don’t feel they are able to muster enough volume.” Daniel Lambert, a wine wholesaler who imports two million bottles a year, said he believed Brexit bureaucracy would add up to £1.50 to the price of a £12 bottle of wine.” No point crying of spilt, well anything… Just smile as you take a selfie with Farage, but don’t say ‘cheese’ cos that’s another casualty delivered by that infamous con artist who promised a vision of untold prosperity after Brexit.
Goodwin elaborates on how, “Meanwhile a cheesemaker in Cheshire has been left with a £250,000 Brexit-shaped hole in his business after the UK formally severed ties with Brussels. Simon Spurrell revealed that he has lost 20 percent of his sales overnight, after discovering that he would have to prove a £180 health certificate on retail orders to EU consumers, including those buying £30 personal gift packs of his award-winning wax-wrapped cheese.” In a separate London Economics Article entitled, “Brexit blows £250,000 chunk in Cheshire cheesemaker’s business,” he reveals the problem as, “Simon Spurrell said he would now have to switch a large part of his business to France.” He says of Spurrell, “A cheesemaker in Cheshire has been left with a £250,000 Brexit-shaped hole in his business after the UK formally severed ties with the European Union earlier this month.”
Goodwin reports that, “Simon Spurrell revealed that he has lost 20 percent of his sales overnight, after discovering that he would have to prove a £180 health certificate on retail orders to EU consumers, including those buying £30 personal gift packs of his award-winning wax-wrapped cheese. He told the Guardian that he had hoped to take advantage of the ‘sunny uplands’ promised by Boris Johnson, but instead has seen his online retail business come to a ‘dead stop’. ‘Our business had high hopes of continued growth in the EU market, after seeing the avoidance of the no-deal and announcement of a free trade deal,’ he said. ‘What has only become clear in the last week is that our successful B2C [business to consumer] online sales to EU consumers is now impossible to operate’. In a desperate effort to save his business, Spurrell will now switch a £1 million he had planned to make in a distribution centre in Macclesfield to France, with the loss of 20 jobs and tax revenue in the UK.”
Goodwin quotes Spurrell, “‘It is a real shame because that means I’m now going to invest in France, provide French employment, and then contribute to the EU tax system, which was pretty much going against the whole reason that we were meant to be leaving,’ he said. While Spurrell was aware that he would need vets to sign off customs declarations and health certificates for wholesale customers, he did not realise that the same stipulations would be required for smaller, private buyers. ‘It’s as if someone forgot to negotiate this part of the deal, they forgot that there needed to be an exemption or allowance for the direct consumer sales. ‘We ship to the USA, Canada, Norway, etc, all non-EU countries; we have never had a problem with at all. It is an oversight in the agreement that does not affect EU producers at all, but is a dead stop for all UK producers selling into the EU via online sales,’ he added.”
Hitting UK consumers where it hurts, the Guardian say, “Yesterday, as the impact of leaving the single market and customs union on 1 January became ever more clear, the Financial Times reported that the cost of a £12 bottle of wine in UK shops could rise by up to £1.50 a bottle because of the extra bureaucracy and charges affecting imports. In a further blow to the government’s idea of ‘global Britain’ after Brexit, the chances of signing a swift UK/US trade deal also appeared to be ebbing away after President Joe Biden’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, made clear the president had other more pressing domestic economic priorities than international trade deals. Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and shadow minister for the Cabinet Office, said: “Once again we see this government’s sheer incompetence and lack of planning holding British businesses back and slowing our economic recovery. ‘They’ve got to get a grip on this now and stop leaving our businesses out in the cold’.”
In the London Economic Article entitled, “Lord Darroch: UK-US trade deal in Biden’s first term would be ‘a stretch’,” Jack Peat reports that, “He said there are two bigger deals the president could potentially do, an EU-US free trade deal and taking America into the transpacific partnership. The UK would be ‘lucky’ to strike a trade deal with Washington in Joe Biden’s first term as president, the former UK ambassador to the US has said. Ahead of Mr Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday, Lord (Kim) Darroch, who was forced to quit in 2019 after frank diplomatic cables referring to current President Donald Trump were leaked, said he doubts a UK-US trade agreement will be completed within the next four years. He told BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour on Sunday: ‘Biden has said in the last few weeks that doing trade deals is not a priority for him for at least the first part of his presidency, and my guess is that certainly covers the next 12 months, it may cover the next 24 months’.”
Peat quotes Darroch saying, “I have my doubts about whether a UK deal will be a priority. When he comes to do one, there are two much bigger trade deals that he could potentially do, rather than a deal with a medium-sized country of 65 million people. One is he could resume the talks that never finished in (Barack) Obama’s time on an EU-US free trade deal and the other is that he could take America into the transpacific partnership, which is potentially a huge advantage for America and would start to counter Chinese influence in that region. ‘So, honestly, I have my doubts about whether a UK deal will be a priority. I think it’s a stretch to imagine it actually happening in a Biden first term, but we might strike it lucky, we’ll see’.” I do not view this as lucky; it’s almost a relief to know that there will be a delay before Johnson is able to force through a trade deal with the US. Greedy US Corporation will want to inflict their toxic ‘business friendly’ employment practices on the UK and destroy the dwindling power of our Unions.
This delay in negotiating a trade deal might just allow our NHS precious time to recover from the Covid onslaught that has been manipulated by the Tories to accelerate the demise of free access to healthcare by making state provision untenable. Costly Health insurance tied to employment in the US cripples the Trade Unions and gags Whistleblowers by eliminating the ability for workers to act in the public’s best interests. According to Peat there are other considerations in play, namely the Good Friday Agreement. “Mr Biden briefly touched upon the prospect of a UK-US trade deal in the run-up to last year’s presidential election, tweeting in September that Brexit must not jeopardise the Northern Ireland peace process.The 77-year-old, who has Irish roots, wrote: ‘We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit. ‘Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.”
In the London Economics Article entitled, “MEPs vote to add British overseas territories to tax haven blacklist after Brexit,” Henry Goodwin explains another hidden consequence the Tories overlooked. He says that, “Britain’s membership of the European Union had afforded it some protection, and allowed it to protect its overseas territories from scrutiny. The European Parliament wants to add UK overseas territories, including the British Virgin Islands, Guernsey and Jersey, to its tax havens blacklist now that Brexit is done. Seeking to send a tough message on tax avoidance, MEPs last week voted overwhelmingly in favour of adding more nations and territories to a growing list of non-cooperative jurisdiction. The resolution, passed with a majority of 537, included measures calling for the automatic inclusion on the blacklist of countries with 0 per cent tax regimes – including the UK’s overseas territories, which transparency campaigners consider havens for tax avoidance.”
Goodwin elaborates on how, “Britain’s membership of the European Union had afforded it some protection, and allowed it to protect its overseas territories from scrutiny. The text of the vote explicitly mentioned the Brexit deal, suggesting that the UK’s departure from the EU was based on ‘mutual values and geared towards common prosperity, which automatically excludes aggressive tax competition’. Robert Palmer, the director of the Tax Justice UK campaign group, told the Guardian: ‘Post-Brexit the UK tax havens have lost their protector within the corridors of Brussels. I’d expect to see the EU to ramp up pressure on places like Jersey to clean up their act. ‘The UK itself has been warned that if the government tries a Singapore-on-Thames approach, with a bonfire of regulations and taxes, then the EU will act swiftly’.”
Goodwin also reveals that, “Meanwhile, elsewhere in Britain’s remaining overseas territories, more than one in 10 adults on the Cayman Islands, widely regarded as a tax haven, have been protected against coronavirus after a gift of Pfizer vaccine from London. Despite many over-80s in Britain are still waiting to receive their jabs, the Caribbean islands have inoculated most over-70s, and will soon move on to its younger population, the Sunday Times reported. Despite having had just 38 people with Covid-19, the Caymans were the first of Britain’s overseas territories to receive jabs. The UK has pledged to vaccinate all British overseas territories for free. The Caymans have had just two deaths from the virus in a population of roughly 65,000. The islands have no corporation, income or capital gains tax. “The relationship we have with the United Kingdom is paying massive dividends, the islands’ premier, Alden McLaughlin, said.”
Goodwin reports that, “The Foreign Office said it had a duty to look after its overseas territories, affirming its commitment ‘to supply them with a proportionate share of the vaccines that it procures’.” While this commitment is admirable it defies logic to start into the vaccination program so wholeheartedly in a place where the incidence of infection is relatively miniscule and the ability to police entry points offers extra protection to the residents. Many of our island territories recognized how devastating the threat of Covid was, not just to their economy, but also to their limited Healthcare resources; they took full advantage of their island status, closed borders and promptly restricted entry under quarantine. Notably the far larger islands of New Zealand used the same strategy to protect their people from Covid and are successfully returned to near normality. In contrast, despite our island status, the Tory Government left our borders wide open and encouraged hundreds of Madrid football fans to fly in with the virus: look where we are now!
When Boris Johnson or one of his rabid Tory Brexiteer Ministers is asked to point out one of the benefits of out departure from the EU they struggle to name a solitary advantage beyond gaining access to Covid vaccines earlier than other countries in the block, at least partially due to the vaccine produced here in Oxford. This is just as well after Johnson’s shambolic handling of the Pandemic has taken case numbers through the stratosphere, resulting in a staggering death toll unmatched anywhere else in Europe! While ‘bullshit Boris’ brags about the AstroZanika achievement, as if he knocked it up over the weekend with a home science kit; the only thing truly ‘world-beating’ in the UK is our soaring death rate, to be shortly followed by the most seriously catastrophic economic downturn anywhere in the EU! The Tories will follow through with their agenda to bleed the country dry, syphoning off public funds into the hands of Corporate profiteers, while the British public suffer aggressive austerity glossed over with the ‘lev…up’ lie (LUL).
The push-back from neglected and abandoned citizens and embattled Trade Unions must be robust and relentless or we will suffer decades with the Tory boot on our necks. We cannot combat the ‘LUL’ oxymoron by keep referring to it in debates; this is exactly how ‘austerity’ became an accepted norm that was branded necessary to bring down the deficit. The cruel policy destroyed many lives and we cannot fall for the same horrific mistake again, as too many have died in this ongoing Tory ‘Slaughter of the Sheeple.’ We are already being primed for wage freezes and benefit cuts that will be sold as necessary in order to pay down the debts of Covid. Rishi Sunak has never even hinted at a tax increase on the wealthy, while he contemplates how soon he can snatch that £20 a week back from those subsisting on Universal Credit. There is no shaming the Tories as they are devoid of human empathy, but as other countries take note of UNICEF feeding hungry families in London the overseas embarrassment might just take hold.
There’s a reason that the Tories want all children back in school and it has nothing to do with the widening academic attainment gap or concern over the mental health of our kids. If these were genuine Tory concerns they wouldn’t simultaneously expect children to try to learn while starving hungry or traumatized by the constant stress of eviction and destitution; we must challenge them on this cruel reality. Children have been used as vectors to spread Covid in poor communities where multigenerational households cram people into temporary housing in conditions where they cannot self-isolate even if they were able to work from home. The frontline workers on zero-hours contracts cannot afford to stop working, but to the Tories this sector of the population is expendable. There is no other explanation for the Tory strategy regarding this Pandemic as there have been too many devastatingly harmful decisions to imagine this is not a warped part of the Cummings ‘Herd Immunity’ eugenics program as Johnson ‘let it rip’ throughout the UK!
In other countries people who are as severely exploited, oppressed and subjugated by their Government take to the streets in protest, but the British people just suffer in silent punishment, reveling in their stoicism and whatever meager help the community can try to provide. We will only put an end to the deliberate persecution inflicted on us by the wealthy elite by relentlessly protesting against the Tory Sovereign Dictatorship. They are manipulating Covid restrictions and using scare tactics to prevent demonstrations. If we gather in large enough groups they could be overwhelmed, but they have already anticipated this escalation in their Yellowhammer planning; they will use force. The Spycops Bill will allow private mercenaries to infiltrate our ranks to target those who attempt to organize; we can expect this surveillance to increase exponentially. We must Challenge, Protest and Investigate to Expose the Tory Corruption in order to remove them from power; international pressure may help, but not if we fail to take to the streets on mass. DO NOT MOVE ON!