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Merged Now What?

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It appears the EU want article 50 triggered ASAP. Brexiters don't like being told what to do by the EU. Remainers don't want article 50 triggered at all.

Are the tides turning ?
 
Spanx said:
It appears the EU want article 50 triggered ASAP. Brexiters don't like being told what to do by the EU. Remainers don't want article 50 triggered at all.

Are the tides turning ?
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What does this actually mean? What metaphorical tides?
 
McHrozni said:
I wish you good luck at competing on quality with British weather.
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The weather here is plenty good enough to grow strawberries in large parts of the country as it happens.

You can also grow anything you like all year round using hydroponics.

The vast majority of commercially grown strawberries are Elsanta variety. Grown mostly because they are large robust, very aesthetically pleasing fruits with a longer cropping season.

Sadly they taste bland unless you eat them immediately, which isn't going to happen unless you work as a strawberry picker, or grow your own.

There's loads more strawberries that are much more flavourful, sadly though they are almost always more squishy, and don't yield nearly as much weight in fruit per plant, so noone grows them.

If you can find them look out for Driscoll Jubilee variety. Elsanta can't hold a candle to them.
Strawberry season in the UK is June till August, so as it happens now is the best time of year to try and find some.
 
The Don said:
...and yet for the majority of people, the majority of the time price is important when it comes to food purchases. The UK strawberry crop is too short-lived and too small to satisfy demand so they'll be competing against cheaper imported fruits
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Out of season (a growing season that's elongated with growing technology and plant genetics) we import the vast majority of fruit and veg already.

It's always strawberry season somewhere in the world, we currently buy a lot of strawberries from Holland, Spain and Egypt as it is.

There's always a niche market of 'traditional English' fruit and veg that comes onto the market in season (there's literally hundreds of varieties of English apple for example, and the most you'll see in an average supermaket is 5.)

Lots of that niche market goes to high end restaurants, where price is not a big factor.

The bulk of the food that most people eat and buy comes via supermarkets though, where price most definitely is a big factor, even moreso with the rise of discount retailers like Aldi and Lidl.
 
CapelDodger said:
It's not as simple as that. Nothing about this subject is allowed to be.
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I agree it's not simple.

To date the only thing that has happened is that article 50 needs to be triggered which leave want and the EU agree.

After article 50 the UK have no option but to agree with everything that the EU demands unless we totally disconnect.

If it had been Germany wanting to leave the EU how would the UK react? Would we let them cherry pick? My guess is no.
 
gypsyjackson said:
It's already being done to a certain extent. I visited Thanet Earth in Kent about 6 years ago, which is an integrated hydroponic greenhouse complex which generates much of its own power through renewable means. At the time it was growing 12% of the UK's consumption of peppers (capsicum/bell), but it might be more now.

Of course, it was owned and run by a pair of Dutch brothers.
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And they tasted like.........?
 
Ambrosia said:
Out of season (a growing season that's elongated with growing technology and plant genetics) we import the vast majority of fruit and veg already.

It's always strawberry season somewhere in the world, we currently buy a lot of strawberries from Holland, Spain and Egypt as it is.
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That's absolutely correct. If UK strawberry production prices rise as a result of rising labour costs then they'll be well placed to take advantage and take an even greater share of the UK strawberry market.

Unless of course currency movements and/or tariffs mean that the price of imported strawberries rise but then that'll mean inflation, wages will need to rise (or living standards fall) which will mean that UK strawberries will be un-competitively priced again.

Of course its not just strawberries, it's all labour intensive fruit and veg.

Ambrosia said:
There's always a niche market of 'traditional English' fruit and veg that comes onto the market in season (there's literally hundreds of varieties of English apple for example, and the most you'll see in an average supermaket is 5.)

Lots of that niche market goes to high end restaurants, where price is not a big factor.
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True, but servicing a niche is no way to sustain an entire industry.

Ambrosia said:
The bulk of the food that most people eat and buy comes via supermarkets though, where price most definitely is a big factor, even moreso with the rise of discount retailers like Aldi and Lidl.
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Exactly. In that market, British growers with higher labour costs will lose out to growers in the rest of the world. Not the result that the UK farmers were hoping for.
 
cullennz said:
And they tasted like.........?
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Not sure. I didn't take a bite out of one when I was there, but presumably have done when buying peppers from Tesco, and I didn't notice any change in pepper flavour.

I did taste a strawberry from West Malling research centre down the road, which had been grown using one tenth of the water needed for average strawberries, and it was really good. That said it was in strawberry season.
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
Hey look... we're taking our country back to the heady days of 2009.

https://www.markiteconomics.com/Survey/PressRelease.mvc/b68c3686a48c40198505b81e4e55cd81
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Yeah, the BBC have a piece. Not good.
Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the figures provided the "first major evidence that the UK is entering a sharp downturn".
Neil Wilson, markets analyst at ETX Capital, said he thought the UK was "heading for a recession again".
 
catsmate said:
Yeah, the BBC have a piece. Not good.
Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the figures provided the "first major evidence that the UK is entering a sharp downturn".
Neil Wilson, markets analyst at ETX Capital, said he thought the UK was "heading for a recession again".
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Of course we are still in Europe so this downturn can not be blamed on brexit. It is just further evidence of why we need to leave..... and something to do with fly fishing quotas in Sudan, which I think was the main reason for voting leave as opposed to the economy........
 
The Don said:
That's absolutely correct. If UK strawberry production prices rise as a result of rising labour costs then they'll be well placed to take advantage and take an even greater share of the UK strawberry market.

Unless of course currency movements and/or tariffs mean that the price of imported strawberries rise but then that'll mean inflation, wages will need to rise (or living standards fall) which will mean that UK strawberries will be un-competitively priced again.

Of course its not just strawberries, it's all labour intensive fruit and veg.
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I think that things will sort of balance out and while I'd be surprised to see tariffs introduced, currency fluctuations, and the cost of transportation as fuel prices will rise as a result of currency changes, are going to mean food prices rise, for the next several years at least.

The UK is headed for recession in the short term while everything settles out and the economic outlook isn't going to be good until we've untangled ourselves from the EU and have a clearer idea of how post Brexit EU trade is gong to look.

We're still 6 months away from triggering article 50 and there's going to be a bunch of off the record informal pre-negotiation talks, and the EU in general and France in particular are going to threaten us with big sticks, and the economy is going to bounce up and down quite a bit in the next 6 months.

In 5 years time though things ought to be a lot better, we ought to have a good base of trade deals hammered out with our main trading partners, there'll be a special visa type system to allow migrant workers short term access to the UK and some kind of points based permanent visa system.

Sort of "pseudo Free Movement of people"
 
Ambrosia said:
I think that things will sort of balance out and while I'd be surprised to see tariffs introduced, currency fluctuations, and the cost of transportation as fuel prices will rise as a result of currency changes, are going to mean food prices rise, for the next several years at least.

The UK is headed for recession in the short term while everything settles out and the economic outlook isn't going to be good until we've untangled ourselves from the EU and have a clearer idea of how post Brexit EU trade is gong to look.

We're still 6 months away from triggering article 50 and there's going to be a bunch of off the record informal pre-negotiation talks, and the EU in general and France in particular are going to threaten us with big sticks, and the economy is going to bounce up and down quite a bit in the next 6 months.

In 5 years time though things ought to be a lot better, we ought to have a good base of trade deals hammered out with our main trading partners, there'll be a special visa type system to allow migrant workers short term access to the UK and some kind of points based permanent visa system.

Sort of "pseudo Free Movement of people"
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What is this thinking based on?

The Tories right now are in the middle of clamping down on non-EU immigration even further by raising the barriers yet again.

I can't see there being any points system and it's a stupid approach anyway. Why anyone thinks the government can centrally plan the demographics of the country and the workforce effectively is beyond me. Especially when the less thinking sections of the population are screaming to get the migrants out.

We'll no doubt get some sticking plasters for farm workers etc but they're unlikely to be 100% effective.

As for the economy. Any potential upsides so far seem to be based on wishful thinking.
 
At present because of the EU trade deals with non EU countries we potentially have access to approx 50 trade deals outside of any business we do with the EU. We only really utilise 28 of these to any major degree at present.
The scale of the post Brexit trade deals are that not only do we have to sort out the internal EU trade deal with all of the free movement issues, financial services issues etc but also these existing 28 major trade deals with non EU countries that we have access to at present because we are members of the EU.
This is not to get any growth in International trade but to enable us just to maintain our present position. Whether the UK has the capacity to fulfill any more than this is still to be considered and is more to do with business readiness than anything else. I do not think the amount of time this will take can be underestimated and 5 years is very optimistic.
I reckon based on past work in this area that it will take approximately 8 years to get back to our present status quo and that is being very confident that no trade deal will take more than 3 months to complete, and that they will all be straightforward which of course will not happen.
The cbi has a very useful fact sheet on all of this http://news.cbi.org.uk/business-iss...ness-facts/10-facts-about-eu-trade-deals-pdf/
 
MCel58 said:
At present because of the EU trade deals with non EU countries we potentially have access to approx 50 trade deals outside of any business we do with the EU. We only really utilise 28 of these to any major degree at present.
The scale of the post Brexit trade deals are that not only do we have to sort out the internal EU trade deal with all of the free movement issues, financial services issues etc but also these existing 28 major trade deals with non EU countries that we have access to at present because we are members of the EU.
This is not to get any growth in International trade but to enable us just to maintain our present position. Whether the UK has the capacity to fulfill any more than this is still to be considered and is more to do with business readiness than anything else. I do not think the amount of time this will take can be underestimated and 5 years is very optimistic.
I reckon based on past work in this area that it will take approximately 8 years to get back to our present status quo and that is being very confident that no trade deal will take more than 3 months to complete, and that they will all be straightforward which of course will not happen.
The cbi has a very useful fact sheet on all of this http://news.cbi.org.uk/business-iss...ness-facts/10-facts-about-eu-trade-deals-pdf/
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3 months seems ridiculously generous to be honest. The 7 or 8 years it takes the EU to negotiate something is probably at the other end of the extreme but somewhere in the order of a year or three sounds more realistic.

We might get back to where we started in 20 years time.
 
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