Yeah. Pretty much. The costs to export to the EU are horrific in terms of time and complexity and competitiveness.
Literally all of my clients who sold into the EU on Amazon have stopped simply because the tories left it until last minute to release the info on trade.
Everything that goes there now needs a customs label, Eori info, potentially an invoice including the origin of the goods. VAT registration if you're storing the goods in that country as well.
A lot of them have received a flood of complaints from their EU customers for customs charges.
Of course, there is going to be a ton of companies who did little business in the EU and this caused them to say 'fuck that' based on what they now have to do, but that's a huge drop in trade.

These new trade deals in the arse end of the world aren't going to solve that because there's a shortage of containers now and shipping around the world has gone up by about 400%

Excuse me, I'm off to buy seven Vauxhall vans.

Force private business to buy stuff? What a commie!

Don’t be bollocks, eat a mollusc.

Monkey’s next job is in digital advertising and marketing. He just doesn’t know it yet.

The gym for muscles!

No fucking influencer or Bake Off is gonna get me to eat sea insects.

It’s all about jus.

And calling something street food when it isn’t.

Well this endevour is going just spiffing.

Brexit news!

Here’s the amazing new replacement for the Erasmus scheme.



Instead of free tuition, a generous travel allowance and £630 towards living costs, students can now pay their own tuition fees, pay for their own travel, and have £490 towards living costs.

Meaning that overseas study is now just for the well-off.

And what about the main pressing issue with Brexit - food import and supply problems?

The new import process is due to kick in on April 1st, and be fully implemented by July 1st. That’ll be all the new import regulations and food standards. Because until then, we’ve been, er, *checks notes* just letting everything through without any checks or food safety certification? Okay.

But now the UK Gov have held their hands up and said that they can’t get anything ready by April. Or by July. So the new rules are on hold indefinitely. Oh good.

The fact remains, this approach plays very well with the nativist electoral public of this country. And that is what counts for Johnson and his ilk. It won’t end well for him, but I think it’ll just get worse for us: the “opposition” is spectacularly ill-named

Both good points, thanks Funk.

(And, y’know, as if the nation hasn’t pissed on Turing’s legacy enough yet …)

The thing that so many liberal middle class types don't get, when they disparage the working classes voting against their 'interests', is that we (I'm a middle class liberal) did nothing, literally fuck all, to make sure that stuff like Erasmus was properly known about. I know plenty of middle class students who took advantage of it and would not have been able to afford such an experience without Erasmus. I don't know any people from more disadvantaged backgrounds (to be fair my sample is embarrassingly low) who knew about it, never mind would think they could take advantage of it whilst at uni.

This is a small example of the total failure of centrists (before Gurt comes in to have a go, I'm using centrists as short hand for middle class liberals who quite like economic things the way they are thank you but are appalled by populism and social conservatism and brexit - people who like Blair, or Cameron, or Clegg, or Starmer) to make a positive case for the EU, or a positive case for anything to anybody outside of their bubble.

It's too easy to blame populists and shitty press barons. They only profit when there is the opportunity to do so.  They need the fertile ground of rising inequality, non-existent social mobility to sprout and grow, and that's soil we laid over the last twenty years (Blair/Brown/Cameron/Clegg). Fuck knows what we do about it now.

Roujin wrote:

Escape wrote:

On the rare occasions I buy something in an upmarket shop I feel self-conscious about paying with my prole Debit card.

Dude going into fancy places and paying on your debit card is the real flex, it's like POW I have the actual funds in my account for this right now, no putting it off until payday for me yo!

Do you think all the people working on the tills probsbly getting near minimum wage are going to be actually impressed if lord of the manor turns up and whips out a black card? Funniest shit I ever saw like that was when I had a part time job in Thornton's when I was at college and this dude in his camel coat comes in, piles up a load of the massive boxes on the checkout and then his dickhead platinum whatever card wouldn't go through. It was amazing, he was all like "I've brought cars on this card!" Patricia on the till just quipped "That's probably why there's not enough left to buy these then." Legendary shelling, probably the single best bit of my time working in retail.

To this day, one of the worst moments of my life. Was gonna ask that Patricia for her number and all.

What did people out down for English/Scottish/British/European in the census?

I'm supportive of Scotland (and Wales) going they're own way, and reunification, but it has got me mulling over if that would mean I had to stop caring myself British and start saying English. I guess not entirely, given even now I can say European in at least some places, but still ugh.

Trying to think of anything beyond football and rugby where I'm specifically pro-english, and coming up blank...