I fail to see the "bombshell" here. This is what everyone expected when leaving the EU single market.
The only bombshell would be if the UK negotiators managed to prevent a hard Brexit. Given the current track record of their leading political party, this seems unlikely.
It is not what the “no downsides, only considerable upsides” crowd expected. Remember that a lot of people, and dodgy newspapers, still cry ‘project fear’ at any expert opinion, so concrete consequences like this are going to shock some people.
Not sure about that. Notoriously, David Davis, arch-brexiter, didn’t realise the UK couldn’t negotiate separate trade deals with EU states until after the Brexit vote. A lot of them are just confused.
Yes, "bombshell" is a pretty silly way of putting it. Any business with an even semi-competent leadership has been planning on the assumption that these types of things will be gone and are mitigating the issues as far as they can.
I'd imagine it depends on how much attention the operators in this marketplace have been paying.
If they've believed UK Government rhetoric about how Brexit will be a smooth process that will enhance the UK's trading opportunities, this may come as a surprise.
There are (IMO) a reasonable number of UK citizens and businesses who haven't grasped the likely consequences of what's happening on 1/1/21
Not to add insult to injury, but it's been said that coronavirus actually plays into the hand of current UK gov as they have a scape goat if things go south.
Indeed they are not. What I find a bit puzzling is that the UK Gov. absolutely had an easy escape hatch from the cliff edge of end of 2020, by saying "we've got to delay due to the pandemic" I don't think many people would have complained if they had.
Instead they explicitly rejected that opportunity and carried onwards...
As is often the case with Brexit the real explanation for inexplicable actions of the current government is all about internal Tory party management. I read this article a while back which explains it quite well: https://nicktyrone.com/why-i-believe-the-boris-johnson-gover...
Very interesting article, if a bit worrying for the UK's economy in the short/medium term.
I think it could well be right that they're hoping for the (likely impossible) blink from the EU, but between that, the heavy political toll a US trade deal would require (it would have a big impact on the UK farming community+possibly other areas) and the expanding spat with China, it's really not shaping up to be a good period, economically speaking.
This. You really have to be here to believe the extent to which the average Joe on the street believes they'll be able to have their cake and eat it after this is settled.
What's bizarre is that when challenged on how ridiculous that is, they'll immediately accept it as rational before saying "well we voted out anyway so it doesn't matter".
> You really have to be here to believe the extent to which the average Joe on the street believes they'll be able to have their cake and eat it after this is settled.
Still, nothing beats the cluelessness of pro-brexit British expats when they are faced with the consequences of what they demanded.
The Brexiteer in my family blames it all on the Europeans, apparently they’re the ones raising all these barriers and cutting us off from the benefits of membership out of spite.
Polling has repeatedly shown very widespread public confusion over what Brexit will actually do. Even many remain voters don’t realise all the downsides.
The upsides of Brexit are generally, at best, very subjective and ephemeral (‘sovereignty’ in the sense of passport colour change) or outright imaginary (the EU is banning kettles and jam).
As a remain voter, I'm not best to advocate for the strengths of leave. As I'm sure you're aware, debate between remain and leave is difficult. Characterising sovereignty concerns as "passport colour change" won't start the conversation on the right path, however.
Please don't discredit the positions or the book solely from my my hazy memory of the book, but here goes:
* EU is a weakening trade bloc, so we're better off out of the customs union, and making trade deals that work for UK, rather than that work for the EU (example: cheaper tomatoes from Africa, that the EU will not make, since it'll make Spain/Italy worse off)
* UK's voting patterns within EU was anomolous: UK voted against policies far more than other countries anyway.
* UK public seems to have a max acceptable rate of immigration, and we may prefer more selective immigration policies (e.g. target the high skilled workers in India, China, Australia)
Those are meant to pique your interest in the book. I don't think starting a debate on HN will be productive, at least because I barely remember the book.
> Characterising sovereignty concerns as "passport colour change" won't start the conversation on the right path, however.
By that I meant that the Brexiter conception of sovereignty is heavily based on surface symbolism; the archetypical Brexiter is fine with taking US rules on food safety, in which they have no voice in making, if it means they can change the colour of the passport (which, of course, they could do within the EU anyway, but never mind). That is, Brexit is not generally actually concerned with sovereignty in any real sense, and Brexit Britain will lose control, not gain it.
Britain before the virus had close to full employment. We had 3 or 4 unfilled positions for every person on unemployment benefit. Most people unemployed found jobs quickly. In mid 2019 there were only 327,000 Britons who had been unemployed for more than a year, but over 3.5 million foreign nationals working in the UK.
The British jobs for British people argument is utter garbage. It’s so incredibly far from reality it beggars belief. It’s flat earth economics. The Johnson government knows this perfectly well, that’s why they extended work visa rights for foreign students in the UK and guaranteed that foreign nationals in the UK would keep long term rights to work here.
Our economy is crying out for skilled workers, it’s the number one roadblock to increased growth. Foreign workers tend to be young, more productive, consume fewer social services, pay more tax and commit fewer crimes than native Brits, by a lot. With an ageing population and increasing health care and pension costs, we need them more than ever.
> Britain before the virus had close to full employment.
This is not a good line of argumentation. I'll refrain from using stronger terms so as not to violate the site guidelines.
Fact is: In many European countries the low wage "jobs" (many of them on exploitative hidden contractor terms) earn barely above social security level.
All of that while still supporting parasites like state TV losers with big pensions.
Of course you have "full employment" if most people earn a subsistence wage.
1) Any analysis that tacitly assumes that the fundamental conflict is between "Europe" and "the common man" should be suspect immediately. It clearly has an agenda.
2) The UK government had at its disposal number of measures that could prevent or mitigate the impact of "Eastern European workers flooding the labor market" on "The Common man" (UK citizen edition thereof, only). Following the accession of Poland and other smaller states in 2004 they could have: raised minimum wage, increased social spending and outright limited the numbers coming from those countries for a time, as some other EU members did. (1) etc.
The UK government chose to do none of these, thus keeping their business backers happy, and were able to avoid blame for this decision, instead pointing at an "external enemy, i.e. "Europe". Of course, this fanned the flames of Xenophobia, and...
This is called the "lump of labour fallacy". There aren't just a fixed number of jobs to be filled by the people who live in a country. As more people arrive, those people need to pay for services such as rent, groceries, cars etc. etc. creating more work and more jobs. The fact is that the majority of immigrants in the UK are young, and therefore contribute a disproportionate amount of tax relative to what they take out from government services.
It's not all roses - UK companies, such as fruit farms, are able to treat low-skilled immigrant workers worse than long-term residents. But there are also plenty of high-skilled immigrants, so to pretend that it's about countries being "sold out to stock markets" is naive. Just wait to see what happens to the NHS as foreign workers leave over the next few months.
Would not the praised invisible hand take care of this? If toilet cleaners provide more value than stock brokers (they do), they should be paid more.
There is also the fact that Eastern European construction workers in Germany do not follow German regulations, rip out Asbest without precautions etc., thus undercutting local builders.
Is this a problem due to the existence of Easter Europeans or a problem of Government not enforcing the regulations. Why don't you demand enforcement of regulations instead of wholesale ban of Eastern Europeans?
Also, how do you feel about sending all non-complient workers to Eastern Europe or do you think that German non-complient workers should just get a fine?
Poor, desperate people who don't speak the local language are not exactly likely to turn whistleblower. We've seen this in the UK recently with the Covid-19 outbreaks on vegetable farms - which are (as Brexit opponents in the press repeatedly and smugly pointed out) almost entirely staffed by migrant workers from Eastern Europe to the point that when Covid shut down travel they had to charter special planes to fly them in - when the people who went to the press about the dodgy hygene conditions were the only British workers. There's a reason these companies prefer migrant workers, and it's not a good one.
Why would workers(those who are accused of breaking the law) blow the whistle? Why do you expect that? How about solving the issue through inspectors and such? Is it normal for UK to have its criminals to report themselves? Is this where Eastern Europeans culturally fail?
Also, were the high Covid-19 counts in the UK due to these workers? If so, if these workers are so bad in hygiene why UK is much worse off than Eastern Europe?
No. Notably in picking seasonal food. The supermarkets don’t pay enough for the food. The picking companies don’t demand enough, plus they have some questionable or outright illegal employment practises. Most of all it’s hard work and Brits simply don’t last in the job.
UK had a great think going on but meritocracy creates both winners and losers.
In a mixture of losers with cocky winners, you have people who overestimate their abilities and people who are bitter.
The bitter ones demand protection against the people who come over and over-compete them, so you introduce non-meritocratic barriers like nationality. Starting on 2021, Polish and Bulgarians and so on will be barred from coming over and compete with the local workers.
The winners are cocky, many of them are really the best - UK has a great talent pool. They have a great thing going on for them, and they believe that they can overcome EU, USA and China.
The protection demand of the lower skill people seems to be served, shortly UK will start building it's non-merit based workforce(unless UK residency is a merit).
The time comes to put the winners on test. This is indeed a bombshell to the cocky ones, the people who had a good thing going on for them and believed that due to their expectational abilities everything will be about the same or better.
I still think that the UK would be able to find it's place in the new world order but many people will face bombshells as their freedoms and abilities to do business will get a haircut.
EU's skilled ones will be protected from UK's in a similar fashion of UK's less-skilled are about to get their protection. It is not as meritocratic system as before but that's what people wanted.
This is an example why exiting global cooperation such as the European Union is bad for the economy. Another side effect may be that For example the real estate market in London goes lower due to less foreign professionals competing for housing. Plus the price of vegetable at the supermarket will be higher due to more expensive imports from Holland the gardeners of Europe and Spanish fruits being more expensive. There is a benefit less carbon emissions from transport. Amazon selling less may be good for the local economy in that local producer can sell more local made products. Consumers will be hurt as they can buy less goods for the same amount of money.
As a European I hope UK will want to rejoin the EU. This will take time. I see price inflation in UK due to less foreign trade will lead to price increases. Inflation will make central banks raise interest rates which will make it more expensive with mortgages. I guess this was not the story UK brexit politicans sold to the UK people. And yes less income less income to UK national health service in form of taxes which was also not what was sold by politicians. Hope UK will rejoin EU soon. Frankly post Covid-19 the question is if UK can afford to exit EU.
> As a European I hope UK will want to rejoin the EU.
As a European living in the UK, no mate, you really don't want these folks to rejoin. Their class system is pathological and their mass-media are fundamentally corrupt. I say this against my best interests, but England in particular should never be allowed back in. They made their bed and they should lie in it.
I hear Italy is an enlightened political paradise with ample job creation and flawless social structures. No wonder you are so enlightened to make these entirely rational remarks
Can you list what interaction you've had with the "class system" in the UK? Is the media in your home country any different? What about the media is "corrupt"?
I have kids and live in an area where the class divisions are pretty stark. Italy has many problems, but at least they don’t enforce classism (and religious separation, which inevitably becomes ethnic division too) from primary-school age.
As for media, UK tabloids are beyond the pale. Nowhere on the continent I’ve ever seen a situation where most of the population is bombarded every day by outright racism and hate. The British upper classes make a joke of it (the “daily heil” etc), because they think it doesn’t really affect them - which is only true until it isn’t, and eventually you get a “brexit moment” when chickens come home to roost. In Italy, newspapers can be partisan or influenced by industrial interests like anywhere else, but tabloid-like hate-speech can only be found in a well-defined small minority of titles. You don’t have a Murdoch-like figure - Berlusconi had his moment and was dealt with like any other political figure. The revolving door between journalism and politics is much worse in the UK, because most people employed in both fields come effectively from the same few classes. You have journalist wives writing excuses for their politician husbands, and nobody bats an eyelid. Somebody like Boris Johnson is free to write lies for decades until he gets where he wants to get.
UK tv is better, I’ll give you that, and the BBC is excellent at being the last bastion of decency in a depressing landscape.
> I have kids and live in an area where the class divisions are pretty stark
How do you mean? I was asking for an illustration of the "class system" that you find oppressing to your person.
> most of the population is bombarded every day by outright racism and hate.
Well that's not true is it.
> The British upper classes make a joke of it
What might be considered Victorian upper class constitutes practically no one. If you don't like the media don't consume it.
Honestly I do not understand this unhealthy fixation on class that you have and frankly reject your assertions regarding it. At a guess you are using it as a simplification to understand a landscape you can't fully understand without it.
Something like 60% of people going to Oxbridge went to private schools, despite 93% attending state schools, and this is after decades of campaigns, outreach, and adjusting entry criteria by school type. And this is new, the fraction from state schools used to be more like 10-20% if that in living memory.
Lol, if your best rebuttal is “no it isn’t, you idiot”, you risk making my point for me. The fact remains that UK tabloids are pretty shocking for anyone who was not grown inside the bubble. When even forums like Reddit consider links to Uk tabloids as “very low quality sources”, the situation is clearly dire. Deny it as much as you want, it’s still there for everyone else to see. But I understand that this sort of thing is difficult to accept, if it’s been normalized since birth, in the same way NorthKorean citizens find it normal to have a communist king or most Americans were really convinced Saddam had WMDs. Propaganda is really difficult to shake off, when it reaches a certain volume.
As for the landscape of classism in the UK, tbh, it is not that hard to elaborate. Of course we are not talking in Victorian terms, modern classism has its own conventions. The facts are, still, that most top jobs go to graduates from top universities, whose alumni are drafted overwhelmingly from certain (expensive) schools, whose pupils are put “on rails” at the tender age of 4 by parents with deep pockets. See for example this source, but the situation is very well-known: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/oxford-unive... Note that i’m not talking in absolutes, this is actually something that affects me: I know my kids will struggle to ever reach any pinnacle, if they stay here, simply because I cannot afford to put them through the “right” schools.
This system has its upsides (the upper classes are really well-educated, as our classicist PM demonstrates) but it is undeniably a drag on social mobility: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48103017i
Which would have the knock-on effect of making EU food competitive in the UK but UK food non-competitive in the EU. Basically, making UK food industries less competitive.
That's before you get to WTO MFN which would mean we would have to reduce tariffs to zero not just for the EU but for the whole of the world, so our farmers would be competing against low wages everywhere. It would devastate our farmers in short order.
Yeah, I thought about this but I honestly don't know enough about how it works e.g. are countries allowed to bar food from coming into a country for not meeting safety standards even though they've set global tariffs to 0?
My gut says "yes" which is why I decided to shy away from that part.
Yes, those are the famous NTBs (non-tariff barriers). Since tariffs, apart from agriculture, are generally very low nowadays a lot of aim of free trade agreements is about reducing NTBs.
that would be against what brexit was voted for. the idea at least the one politicians were selling was that it would help improve local production by making EU products less competitive.
> I guess this was not the story UK brexit politicans sold to the UK people. And yes less income less income to UK national health service in form of taxes which was also not what was sold by politicians.
You do realise that currently any company operating in a EU members country can have their HQ in any EU members country and with that, game the TAX system. So many companies operate in EU member countries, paying very little tax as they can just pay tax in another EU member country and that may well be a lower rate. For example Ireland and Luxembourg have done well in gaming the whole corporation TAX system at the expense of taxes being paid fairly in other member countries.
Then whilst some countries have a good minimum wage, you can get around that by employing somebody on a contract in another EU members country and dealt with many good workers, working in the UK under contracts in another EU members country and by that, paid less than minimum wage.
So that will be good for tax income in the UK and also fairer and something the EU has needed to address for years and failing badly as the case against Apple shows - who consolidate the bulk of all their taxes into one single member state.
>As a European I hope UK will want to rejoin the EU.
I'd look at the UK voting record, the UK veto has been instrumental in blocking so many plans by the EU. If you had an employee who was 50% a good employee and the other 50%, disruptive and effecting all the other employee's - would you want to keep them on?
Thing is, the EU needed reform and been the case for near on a decade or more and even they know that. The UK (Cameron) went to the EU to do reforms, they said no and the UK had a vote. After the vote, many EU figureheads publicly said that the EU needed reform and Macron been championing that as it is needed.
However, in all that time the UK had the vote (many years ago now), has the EU gone - ok we are doing reform - this is the plan and we want to do this and that. HAD that happened, the UK would of had something to take back to the people and go - look, we voted to leave the EU - we ain't left yet, however they are changing and with that it is only fair we put this back to the people as things have changed. THAT would of seen the UK stay in the EU.
But no, that didn't happen and case of the EU going we need reform, twiddle thumbs for years and years, and all that's been decided is that Macron will drive it once and only once the UK has left the EU.
I like the EU, I like the UK and honestly it is best for both of them to have a break as best for both overall. Certainly motivated the EU to do some reform and if they don't, the divided in many EU member's is at the stage that without a sit down and addressing the issues thru reform, the EU will just erode away.
Also the whole price/inflation - you do realise that many imports into the UK from the EU are products imported into the EU from outside - like china. So would often see products shipped to central Europe and warehoused and distributed from there. After all, they only need to pay import tax and duty in one member country. Once done they can go to any EU members state. So for some countries, that worked well and others, less so.
So will be a case of for example the HD I brought from Amazon the other week, which shipped from the deepest of France and took a week. Would ship from the UK as the manufacturer would have stocks locally now. Maybe it will be a little cheaper, though that would also cover extra warehouse space/staff in the UK to handle that instead of some warehouse in the EU that is not paying UK tax, land/building rent/taxes....
Now instead of a ship dropping of in the EU down in say Italy, it will be direct to the UK. That avoids lots of lorries/planes and the like shipping stuff from the EU to the UK. So the whole environmental aspect has many opportunities to be better than current. Don't overlook that.
Many things not thought out in the news or media when it comes to brexit - mostly it is all rhetoric and ignores the pro's as well as the con's and those pro's are with the uk and the eu in many ways. The EU for a start been able to get financial control rules move forward after decades of the UK roadblocking them.
But best way to put things about the UK leaving the EU, if you truly love somebody and they are better of without you then you have to let them go.
Now, twenty years from now, things will be worth reviewing though the UK and the EU will be far different places then and not all for the worst.
I for one hope that the Apples imported from New Zealand I buy I will get them cheaper.
Hopefully we will get more products from around the world at affordable prices. EU economy is inefficient and their products are too expensive. For me it is a good riddance.
I’m in the UK. I can see this is going to mean a huge chunk of products disappearing from amazon here. A lot of stuff I order comes from Europe. So supply chain problems for months here we come!
Fun times ahead. And no I didn’t vote for this shit show.
I really wish someone bothered to hold his feet to the fire on that one. He just got to chuckle and shrug it off, and the reaction from most seems to be “lol oh that’s our Boris”
They confirmed they wanted Brexit in the last elections. They had no excuses when Boris was elected. If that is what people want, that is what people deserve.
Some of that comes from the political deadlock that came out of the referendum result. Once the process got hard, there was a feeling of "just make this pain stop!" and the result was the 2019 election.
I do recall some conversations (with Leave voters, no less!) where it was felt the government shouldn't have wasted our time asking us. It's not the public's job to understand the details of international relations, yet it was foisted on the people. In spite of that, the government got it's answer, so just do it!
From the outside it looks as if Brexit is at most slightly unpopular, so it's not unimaginable to believe that in fluctuation we might occasionally find it to be the marginally popular position.
For a lot of people it was a protest vote. They knew Cameron wanted them to vote one way so they did the opposite, it was a vote against the status quo.
For other people they genuinely believed the scapegoating the UK media had done for 20 years+
For others, a minority, they thought that this was a way of pushing the EU to reform some of its more silly practices (like moving parliament around for no reason)
Yet the pro-brexit party is still in power, so it seems the majority still wants brexit or at least isn't willing to put their money where their mouth is.
At the point of the 2019 election stopping Brexit wasn't really on the table - no major party was against it. Labour had a vague message that was not anti-Brexit. Lib Dems may have technically been anti-Brexit but have no trust (is "no Brexit" the same as "no tuition fees"?) and have fewer seats than even the SNP (oh and their leader lost her seat).
I took it seriously. In my social group, the bigger problem I saw was delusional Lexiteers. They're due to get literally nothing they said wanted out of Brexit.
I hope one day we can rejoin, and it doesn't break the UK into pieces, but right now I can't see the Union surviving.
Yes! I encountered these "Lexit" guys too and couldn't believe what I was hearing when they were telling me about how they voted Brexit and why, it just seemed incredibly naive.
Whoever his PR people are did a bang-up job on Social Media /SEO by making him say he likes painting little buses as a hobby. This displaced the previous top results for the search term "Boris Bus" (i.e. the bus with the 350 million GBP lie). It was very "Black Mirror".
I don't know if that ever worked but searching for "Boris Bus" right now on DDG or Google yields mostly results and images of the infamous campaign bus.
The campaign was specifically timed at a crucial point in time when Johnson was jockeying to be the Prime Minister (June 2019). Search engines have a recency bias, and that story made it to all British news sites.
Actually if you prorated the demand from the EU in term of exit payment to the length of the residual budget, you were well over 350m pw. And that's before the big €700bn+ package that the EU is cooking right now which will dwarf those numbers.
The opposite will be annoying as well: I sometimes order products from non-European companies which use UK sellers as their official resellers for the EU. They will probably need to find new EU resellers outside the UK.
Yes. Of course the same applies not just to resellers, but also to companies properly located in the UK. I order quite frequently from Rapha and Wiggle and hope they'll have EU-based fulfilling in place.
Amazon solved a fairly large problem with retailers here. They were shit and abusive to the customers. It’ll just slip back to the status quo again if we lose amazon dominance I hate to say.
I’d rather prefer it if that wasn’t the case for ref but I know British culture well enough to know that we’re lazy and selfish.
>Amazon solved a fairly large problem with retailers here. They were shit and abusive to the customers.
So what's all this 'comingling' thing about then? I assure you that if AMZN becomes dominant, customer service will get worse not better. Bezos is not a charity.
>I’d rather prefer it if that wasn’t the case for ref but I know British culture well enough to know that we’re lazy and selfish.
Substitute 'Romanian' for 'British' then ask if your racism still sounds OK to you.
Galaxus’s is expanding in Germany.
I think there are other semi specialised retailers like Fnac , interdiscount, Mediamarkt that have local shops and shipping.
You can order stuff from amazon US from the UK (and sometimes even through the UK website). Plus lots of vendors based in China. I wouldn't overdo the implications of this change.
What percentage of those products are made in the EU? Asking as all I've brought has been made elsewhere and imported and wehoused in some EU country as import/duty wise it is one border so once in the EU, it's free to move.
Also many things I buy seem to buy from Amazon ship direct from China!
It’ll be fine. Switzerland isn’t in the EU and doesn’t have amazon. Instead amazon ships for free from .fr,de,it and include the reduced vat etc so you don’t have anything extra to pay when receiving. Me for returns they cover the actual shipping costs back to their warehouses.
Do you live in Switzerland? Only a fraction of what’s listed on amazon.de or amazon.fr will ship to Switzerland. Pretty much no electronics will ship to for example. The China loop hole was closed recently so that alibaba and the like are now unavailable. Often you just have to suck it up and pay “Swiss” prices from a local reseller.
And swiss prices are absolutely outrageous. In addition to lots of taxes and duties on certain goods, labour prices in switzerland are sky-high, so visiting a retailer there is usually more expensive than a short shopping trip to France/Germany/Italy...
I don’t think there is duty on most things. VAT is 7.7%. What jacks up the price is retailers thinking « this is Switzerland, people are used to pay through the nose so why not make an extra 20% »
What irks me the most is companies that have no presence in CH but who will ship to CH, and when you go to their website everything is 20–30% more expensive compared to their .de or .fr store (where vat is 20%!). Even though shipping is extra, and it all ships from the same warehouse in Germany or Ireland. Like misterspecs, or revolutioncycles.
I’d say a third of the stuff ships. Sometimes I can find the item locally for a comparable price, but sometimes I’m SOL. It could be better but it also forces me to reevaluate how much I really need something, and reduce on clutter.
In this case, I'm not convinced that it's people in the UK in particular who'll have trouble ordering things from Amazon. For historical reasons, the UK has a disproportionate amount of Amazon logistics infrastructure compared to most other EU countries and I think they've even been fulfilling European "sold by Amazon" orders from the UK warehouses. If anything does affect the supply of goods from UK Amazon it's more likely to be disruption of shipping into the warehouses.
that made sense while UK was in the EU now amazon may opt to move more operations/warehousing to the rest of the EU to cater for the larger market of the two. either way it doesn't mean UK will not be receiving the same products as before, just in smaller quantities to cover UK-only demand.
It is a politician's modus operandi/job to mislead in order to achieve political goals. It would have been the job of the press to point out the problems and the job of the public to form a qualified opinion.
Only the politicians did their jobs, unfortunately...
The press pushing an agenda for either side and not remaining an impartial observer is a huge part of the problem, not only with Brexit.
I'm not sure if in former times the press was just as opinionated and noone noticed. But now, people notice that the press isn't impartial and therefore just do not trust even the rare instances of impartial facts being presented.
> I'm not sure if in former times the press was just as opinionated and noone noticed.
Everyone noticed. It's one of the most frequently discussed things about the British (though not uniquely theirs) press for centuries, both in terms of explicit comment and implicit cultural reference (e.g., such as it being a recurring background element of fiction.)
That's nothing. In 1939, The New York Times did an article about Hitler and his mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden, about how he goes there to unwind and be amongst nature.
So stupid! The UK voted to keep Europeans from coming over here and taking our jobs and seducing our women with their sophisticated accents. There was nothing about blocking European goods and European fulfilment centres. Boris Johnson even assured us that it was going to be easy to get a "great deal" on free trade. This is not the Brexit we voted for!!
> The UK voted to keep Europeans from coming over here and taking our jobs and our women with their sophisticated accents.
This comment expresses an appalling amount of xenophobia and classism. This warped, cartoonish portrayal of "Brexit" voters on HN is not unexpected, but it is disappointing it seems to escape moderation.
I’m curious, just how wrong is the comment? A parallel political scenario, the election of Trump, was also characterized by a fundamental political platform centered against other races and cultures, and this was acknowledged and successful.
The referendum certainly gave a voice to a demographic of nationalists, amongst them some quite insidious people, that's absolutely true.
However, it's simply incorrect to characterise the larger Brexit demographic as people who, majority living in the most deprived areas in the UK, voted for anything other than naive or misguided assumptions about the economic impact of EU membership.
It seems to be a fundamental political platform for all parties these days to dehumanise opponents over practicing the slightest bit of empathy.
I feel you over-play the economic discussion, at least insofar as it was at the forefront.
While economic "freedom" was pushed by the official campaign, however, you can't deny the widespread publicity of the Nazi-esque "Breaking Point" poster. Anecdotally, I saw people pushing to vote Brexit to stop "the scum of Eastern Europe" from coming here and taxi drivers who voted Brexit to "kick the P*s out" (ethnic slur for Pakistani citizens).
The people airing these views weren't hardcore nationalists but regular working class people. Economic circumstances certainly made these voices louder (as hardship always causes populations to turn on "the other"), I will agree there.
It always baffles me when people claim "Paki" is an ethnic slur when used for Pakistani citizens. Do you consider "Brit" for a British citizen to be an ethnic slur as well?
No because "Brit" is never used as an ethnic slur.
For a good example of P* being used in a derogatory form, watch Bend it like Beckham, where it's used against an Indian girl because of the colour of her skin.
People don't push dog shit through your letter box and spray paint "pakis out" if you're white British, but they do if you're Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, etc etc.
Is "Brit" widely used in a derogatory sense when bullying or attacking British-looking people? You can't decide "slur or not" just by "is it a shortened form of a country name".
In the UK it's a derogatory catch-all term for anyone that vaguely looks South Asian and was initially widely publicized in the 60s/70s around "paki-bashing" (= aka "lets gang up and beat up some immigrants").
This is not going to be fun for Ireland. Ireland doesn't have its own regional Amazon, but the UK one would have great fast shipping. I wonder if shipping from Amazon DE or FR will be more popular in the future.
There are services that take delivery in newry (northern ireland) and deliver to dublin. Presumably, they'll still work. Shipping to ireland often costs more anyway, and not everything ships outside the UK.
I don't know how it would work, but the legal border of the EU customs union would be the NI/RoI border, but with some extra paperwork meaning, in practise, the border is the Irish Sea.
Maybe asking a friend in Belfast to forward a parcel to Dublin will continue without any checks, but a parcel forwarding service is unlikely to go unnoticed.
> In reality you might find impacts of the Amazon FBA Brexit bombshell start to impact you earlier. For instance, if you already have stock in Pan-European FBA it is feasible that Amazon will repatriate your stock before the end of the year and certainly are likely to stop sending your stock to Europe at an earlier date.
I am very sceptical that they would do something like above, as there does not seem to be any reason to do so:
- Amazon encourages you to have stock on both sides of the border to allow selling to continue as-is after the transition - repatriating stock automatically would run counter to that.
- There is no legal reason to repatriate stock. The sellers that use Pan-European fulfillment already have to be VAT-registered in all countries that hold their stock, and those registrations will continue to be valid regardless of the EU membership of the seller's home country.
- Amazon has not communicated that it is planning to do so (it has only said that it will stop transfers and fulfillment cross-border on 2021-01-01).
There is no agreement between the negotiators as yet on the repatriation of "stranded" goods after 1 January; the default will depend on any tax agreements between each of the member-states and the UK, virtually all of which pre-date the Single Market Act, and many of which predate the Single European Act (which will cease to grant any rights or impose any obligations on the UK at the end of this year).
In general it is likely that moving goods of any sort -- including one's own personal property -- from a member-state to the UK will from 1 January incur formalities, with a risk of substantial financial liability to the UK's revenue & customs agency by the UK person importing the goods even if that person is conceptually "re-importing" property.
Amazon also will want relief from liability under the law of bailment in England & Wales, and other specific contractual and statutory liability to the UK persons using the systems discussed in the article. The most obvious way to do that is for Amazon ("the bailee") to return the goods to any vendor in England or Wales ("the bailor"). The most obvious time to do that is well before 1 January after which either Amazon is exposed direct liability for import formalities or indirect liability to the (England-and-Wales) bailor.
Another obvious approach is to convince the bailors to waive their rights, effectively writing off their interest in the goods that are in the EU in Amazon's control, possibly for some financial consideration. However, Amazon cannot be certain that it can sell on any such goods because there is as yet no agreement on e.g. Origin (and documentation via certificate of origin) requirements, nor on the continued validity of safety marks and other product labelling. Although it's unlikely that anyone seriously wants existing arrangements to suddenly halt at the end of this year, there remains a risk that a substantial number of UK-sourced goods in the EU prior to the end of December may simply become unsellable in the single market in January (I am less sure about goods (esp. "Mode 5") sourced in the non-EU SM member-states or states that are non-EU&non-SM members of the European Customs Union (EUCU), or the bilateral CU states, and unfortunately somewhat failed at avoiding the trap of calling it all "EU" in this comment, and the trap of thinking the legal positions are probably homogeneous, i.e., there won't be operative side-deals between UK and Turkey before the end of December).
One very open set of questions involves "Mode 5" goods, wherein services are bundled with physical items. That includes warranties and guarantees for repairs, upgrade support including the upgrading of software that controls the physical items' operations, subscriptions bundled in with electronic book readers or the like, access to App Stores and similar. So far the UK government in particular has been focused on goods, not on services, including "Mode 5" services.
Flipping things around, Single Market vendors with bailments in England (and Wales) may be unable to guarantee the continuation of "Mode 5" commitments on goods in E&W. In E&W the retailer would be liable for making good on those commitments or on making the retail customer whole (e.g. by issuing a refund or replacement). FBA does not provide clear legal immunity from retail liability in E&W, and it is easy to imagine litigation brought by e.g. the Consumers Association and other bodies under the super-complaints procedure in the (UK) Enterprise Act 2002 if FBA goods purchased after 1 January cannot have software upgrades or lose access to SM-based customer support. (They are likely safe from liability for such goods if sold before the end of this year.)
(The law is somewhat different, and in relevant ways, in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but going into that would take too many characters :-) )
ETA: the issue here is the law of frustration of contract -- the expiration of the transition period in the withdrawal agreement may create frustrations notwithstanding careful drafting of contracts, and one possible result of a frustrated FBA contract is that the goods in question become involuntary bailments with Amazon as the bailee. This is a concrete risk for goods managed under contract with entities outside the UK.
Single Market sellers with goods pre-positioned in the UK would by default have access to UK courts if needed to exercise (or clarify) their rights as involuntary bailors. Thus it is possibly in Amazon UK's interests to move SM-vendor goods from the UK to an Amazon EU facility in the Single Market or return it to the SM-based person who is the vendor, and to do so before the end of the year and with the consent of the SM vendors.
Of all things implied by Brexit, making business harder for AMZN and their sellers might end up boosting UK retail. Or maybe not, as everyone has to do the customs themselves. To me, characterizing this as a "bombshell" sounds like satire, ie mocking a proverbial Brexiteer sitting at home all day and ordering things on Amazon. OTOH, it's not plausible that this undertone could've been missed by Brits of all people.
Does anyone know what could be a specific reason leading to this change? I mean, deeper than "no single market", what would prevent Amazon from running the same operation, potentially with slightly higher fees to offset relevant transport/import taxes. They ran marketplaces at crazy prices before, like shipping to Australia before local distribution centres.
Because it's still entirely unclear what the arrangements for trade will be, despite the fact that the transition agreement ends on 31st December. For example, the UK government are planning a number of huge lorry parks near the English Channel crossings to deal with new customs arrangements, whatever they may be, but they've only bought one location so far: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jul/12/local-anger...
Edit: to be clearer about what my point is, Amazon relies enormously on friction-free shipping. It might make more sense for them to plan not to ship across a border for a while until it becomes clear what the logistics will be of shipping across that border, rather than guessing what it will be like and getting it horribly wrong. The possible outcomes range from a decent free-trade agreement with minimal disruption (although that seems vanishingly unlikely now) to a hard Brexit (i.e. no agreement) and an immediate sharp stop to frictionless cross-border trade.
I believe they theoretically could, but I guess they don't consider it cost-effective, or are waiting to see what happens, or they are already planning to do it but it will take much more time.
Regarding your "shipping to Australia" example - that is just regular fulfillment of Amazon.com orders from US stock, with an international destination address. That will continue to work in all EU/UK marketplaces, this change is only about fulfilling e.g. amazon.de orders from UK stock and vice-versa (EFN) and cross-border movement of not-yet-sold stock (Pan-European FBA).
Regarding EFN: There is already a similar cross-border program called Amazon Global Store, where Amazon ships e.g. US stock to amazon.co.uk buyers (example: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00AFTQ4X8). It also works for 3rd-party sellers, in which case Amazon buys the item for itself in US and then ships it to the customer in UK ("Allow Amazon to buy my products to sell globally" in Amazon US seller settings).
However, this is much more limited in scope of products compared to what EFN currently is, and those items do not currently ship "internationally" (e.g. I can't order a Global Store item from amazon.co.uk to Finland like I can with EFN items).
Regarding Pan-European FBA: I believe Amazon does not want to move non-sold 3rd-party stock across customs jurisdictions, or at least it has never done that before.
Shipping sold items to end-customers (which they do, e.g. Australia example above) is a bit easier, as e.g. valuing the items is easy (it is exactly the amount the customer paid), and Amazon never has to be at the receiving end.
I think that besides taxes and fees, the main issue - and bottleneck - will be customs.
In EU you have free movement of goods and people, so if I buy from Amazon DE, FR, IT, the item will be shipped and moved around EU territory and easily get delivered to my door.
If I buy from Amazon.com I'll get an email from the customs where they ask me for proof of purchase where the proper taxation/custom fees were paid. This is what will happen in with products coming from the UK. This means the package is being processed by a foreign entity with no time window to be released (because part of it will depend on you as well).
Amazon simply cannot keep UK in their european fulfillment network warehouses because it will have items go through customs. It would be a bottleneck in a seamless movement of products. It's not about geography, it's about crossing borders.
Doesn't Amazon not deliver to Switzerland or something? I think I heard that Swiss people for example can't order from Amazon.co.jp. Meanwhile I can order from Amazon.co.jp to Finland and Amazon (or DHL) handles everything from shipping to VAT and to customs declaration.
A couple years ago Switzerland changed the rules that companies shipping to Switzerland must collect and administer Swiss VAT and companies the size of Amazon said fuck it! and thus don't ship from the US any more. I suspect that the same goes for Amazon Japan.
That sounds very strange. Norway is in a similar position as Switzerland in terms of trade, and Amazon has for the past 10 years collected Norwegian VAT up front when using express shipping.
This year the government mandated that international sellers registered for VAT and Amazon has registered all their local stores in Norway
My guess is that, if not for something else, Amazon and others are left with no choice other than to prepare for the worst now (or yesterday, actually), since there seems to be no progress on the rules for not-so-future EU/UK trade.
I understand what you meant, and would love to read that thread too! However, i don’t think it will come
And I Also don’t think holding in that pain/disgust/anger is healthy.
Watch the same people that spread dangerous misinformation turn around and blame someone else when the consequences of their actions comes back to bite them.
When the only debate being asked for is right versus wrong and the people on both sides are incapable of nuanced discussion it's a total waste of time.
Do you mean the effects of different forms of economic planning (centralized/decentralized) and democratic decision making? No, there is no research or data available, at all.
Another americentric post, seeing the upvotes it gets. This really isn't newsworthy.
Amazon in Europe is small, having <10% of the e-commerce marketshare (compared to >50% in the US). For example, in the Netherlands people are much more likely to shop at Bol, Coolblue or Wehkamp.
It's more about not being able to sell as easily as now, from the UK to the EU, which has a population of 443m.
It's yet another headwind for smaller UK companies, that will see their potential serviceable available market (SAM) get smaller, unless they spend extra. This will also significantly increase the time for the goods to arrive to EU destinations.
You calling this "americentric" is also weird. It's going to be the same situation for all other e-commerce sites, no?
In the UK, Amazon had >30% of all e-commerce marketshare in 2019. I've seen the huge volumes of Amazon packages that get delivered to my building. Especially during the pandemic lockdown!
Amazon is bigger in Europe than you think. And this is an indicator of a general Brexit-y problems; all small sellers will have to deal with this, not just Amazon marketplace ones.
The only bombshell would be if the UK negotiators managed to prevent a hard Brexit. Given the current track record of their leading political party, this seems unlikely.