|
Post by nucleusofswarm on Jan 17, 2021 19:05:59 GMT
Well, recent events have dampened that bit of optimism. It is all solvable, merely bureaucracy. Not a justification for remain vs leave. Such matters should/will hopefully be resolved. As with the delays with transportation of goods such as meat and fish, technology should not be reliant on paperwork as current transitional measures are in place. The decision to leave was not based on such minutiae. Any issues are shared on both sides and we should not blame the UK for breaking away from the EU obsession with procedural red tape. Such matters were a core reason for voting out. I think you're being too lenient on Boris and co. This is not a both sides matter: like with the pandemic handling, the Tories bungled their way through too-slow preparations for leaving, despite being told multiple times by businesses that we weren't ready. Boris was elected on having, in his own words, 'an oven-ready deal' and yet, the last 12 months speak for themselves. After all, weren't they pearl-clutching about protecting British fishermen? And now look whose suffering.
Regardless of political affiliation, don't you think this response, by one of Brexit's grand, shining knights, says something concerning:
And if that's not clear enough, hear it from the seahorse's mouth:
The red tape is not as simple or trivial as you may imply.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 18, 2021 11:11:23 GMT
It is all solvable, merely bureaucracy. Not a justification for remain vs leave. Such matters should/will hopefully be resolved. As with the delays with transportation of goods such as meat and fish, technology should not be reliant on paperwork as current transitional measures are in place. The decision to leave was not based on such minutiae. Any issues are shared on both sides and we should not blame the UK for breaking away from the EU obsession with procedural red tape. Such matters were a core reason for voting out. I think you're being too lenient on Boris and co. This is not a both sides matter: like with the pandemic handling, the Tories bungled their way through too-slow preparations for leaving, despite being told multiple times by businesses that we weren't ready. Boris was elected on having, in his own words, 'an oven-ready deal' and yet, the last 12 months speak for themselves. After all, weren't they pearl-clutching about protecting British fishermen? And now look whose suffering.
Regardless of political affiliation, don't you think this response, by one of Brexit's grand, shining knights, says something concerning:
And if that's not clear enough, hear it from the seahorse's mouth:
The red tape is not as simple or trivial as you may imply.
I make no claim that the Government is competent or blameless in these issues, nor that they could not have been foreseen or prepared for. But like the seizure of lorry divers packed lunches under 'import rules', one cannot excuse the EU for any role in zealously enforcing any potential barriers that will make life difficult. My main point is that it is all solvable. Manual paperwork should be replaced by IT systems as is already the case where preparation has been done. Having Drivers queue at a Portakabin in this day and age is not acceptable, as is the fact that they are turned away if the paperwork is incorrect. Logistics and capacity is needed where increased manual checks of whole shipments of goods is now required, rather than samples (as in the case of seafood) to prevent stocks spoiling as has been happening the past fortnight. It should have been anticipated and prepared for, but incompetence exists down the chain and is not merely dependent on the elected incumbent at the top. "Necessity is the Mother of Invention". I don't think what we are witnessing is the new normal, but a few small issues in the wider scheme of things that will need to be addressed. Its is a big deal for those affected, but so was the scrapping of so much of the UK fleet thanks to the Common Fisheries Policy, which affected far more livelihoods.
|
|
lidar2
Castellan
You know, now that you mention it, I actually do rather like Attack of the Cybermen ...
Likes: 5,788
Member is Online
|
Post by lidar2 on Jan 19, 2021 12:29:47 GMT
Well, recent events have dampened that bit of optimism.
But it's not just trucks. The entertainment business (my area) is feeling the ripples - actors have said that European projects won't take British actors without European passports, and now, one of our own has been hit too:
And well, this too:
It is all solvable, merely bureaucracy. Not a justification for remain vs leave. Such matters should/will hopefully be resolved. As with the delays with transportation of goods such as meat and fish, technology should not be reliant on paperwork as current transitional measures are in place. The decision to leave was not based on such minutiae. Any issues are shared on both sides and we should not blame the UK for breaking away from the EU obsession with procedural red tape. Such matters were a core reason for voting out. I'm afraid, and I say so with the greatest of respect, that those attitudes simply reveal an ignorance of what customs actually is and does. I work for an importer, and have spent considerable time in recent months at webinars, online training, meetings with suppliers and freight companies, etc discussing brexit and how things will work after brexit. I've heard from retired senior Customs officials from the UK and Ireland, small and large haulage companies and they are at one scratching their heads in bewilderment at why any country would do such a demonstrably daft thing as leaving a single market that accounts for 45% of its trade. I'm sorry to report that it is not "solvable" - customs is a complex business and will always be so unless and until we get a world government and a global single market.
The whole discussion around the Irish border focussed lot on minimising customs and originally the brexiteers insisted that it wasn't a problem - it could be solved by technology. But it couldn't be - various experts from around the world testified at Parliamentary select committees the technology simply isn't there and isn't likely to be any time soon. The occasional maverick would pop up to say it could be done, but no one was convinced. If it was that easy, someone would have done it before now and the Irish border wouldn't have been such a big issue in the negotiations. I remember reading at some point over the last 2 or 3 years that even at the most high tech border in the world (Sweden/Norway) the average crossing time for a lorry was 40 minutes.
Customs professionals describe customs as the 2nd oldest profession (although in fairness a lot of professions jokingly describe themselves that way) - customs is primarily about regulating what comes into your country. The collection of tariffs is only a part of what customs does.
I can tell you from first hand experience how thin the trade deal is. People said that it was a bad deal and not much better than no deal at all. That was not sour grapes on the part of Remainers, it is the commercial reality. When you import from /export to the EU you have to go through the full customs procedures the same as trading with every other country. The only difference from the Free trade Agreement is that when you get to the box on the form where you enter the applicable tariff, instead of entering 5% or 10% or whatever, you enter 0%. But otherwise you go through the full customs procedures with all the associated time, cost, etc.
For large businesses that have experience of customs from trading with the rest of the world before brexit this is easier to absorb. For small businesses that have never had to do this before it is a major problem. Granted, there will be a learning curve effect and after the first few customs declarations it will be easier once people know what they are meant to be doing. But even after firms have gone through the learning curve, there will still be significant time/costs involved. We are debating internally if we will need to employ an additional person in our purchasing department to spend their time doing the paperwork - additional overhead cost that will eventually have to be passed on to customers via higher prices. In that respect, the reduction in activity levels due to lockdown has actually been the saving grace - it has got the government off the hook for the worst consequences of last minute nature of the brexit deal.
Also worth noting that agreement only covers British goods, i.e. goods produced in the UK. Again, speaking from personal experience, we have a supplier that is a wholesaler/distributer of goods produced in China. It does no production in the UK. Under the "rules of origin" these do not count as British goods and are not entitled to the preferential 0% tariff, so this company is paying tariffs when it exports to the EU - from their point of view, there may as well not have been a deal. What will that lead to? I don't know, but from talking to them, if they cannot maintain their market share in the EU and get their customers to accept a price rise then they are likely to cut jobs in the UK and open a branch in the EU.
All of the above are not isolated instances - it is being replicated to a greater or lesser extent in every company that trades with the EU. They are most definitely not, as you say in your post "minutiae". I can honestly say that I have not spoken to anyone who actually has to deal with these issues on a day to day basis - customers, suppliers, even some who voted Leave - who now thinks brexit was good idea, or at least who is willing to say so in public.
There's a couple of points you made that are worth picking up on: You say "Not a justification for remain vs leave . . . The decision to leave was not based on such minutiae" and then a couple of sentences later "Such matters were a core reason for voting out". Unless I'm missing something, aren't you contradicting yourself?
Secondly you say "we should not blame the UK for breaking away from the EU obsession with procedural red tape". It is worth noting that customs procedures are standardised via the WTO - the EU procedures are not any more onerous than any other county we trade with and they have not invented new procedures specially for the UK. The problem is that we do so much trade with the EU and that a lot of it is done by small business that don't really have the infrastructure in terms of IT/personnel to deal with customs. But more fundamentally, the logic of your argument does not stack up - you are actually making an argument for Remain. When we were a member of the EU, participating in the single market, we didn't have to do any of the procedural red tape in order to trade with the EU - so it is not as if we were leaving to get away from it. The procedural red tape only applies to non-members who want to trade with the EU. So your argument seems to be that we disliked EU red tape so much (even though it didn't apply to us as a member) that we left in order to get away from it but now, having left, we have become subject to the very red tape we wanted to get away from, even though it had never applied to us when we were a member. And this proves we were right to leave.
Brexit was always a populist cause, never a coherent rational strategy for the UK. It was never more than a few good slogans and tabloid headlines. Like all populist causes it was always about denying the complex reality, dismissing inconvenient facts as "minutiae" and instead offering simple solutions and slogans. Remember Michael Gove's line in debate "I think we're all tired of experts" - it maybe strikes a chord but it is the equivalent of a child sticking its fingers in its ears when it doesn't like what it hears.
I hope I'm wrong about brexit, I really really do.
|
|
|
Post by Chakoteya on Jan 19, 2021 14:09:06 GMT
Ahem. UK versus GB.
UK includes Northern Ireland, which has a special arrangement across the border with Eire.
GB is the big lump of rock and soil (with a few little bits scattered around it) of whom 2 countries voted to leave and one to remain.
Put the wrong two letters on your documentation and you are b*ggered for days until you find out and correct it.
Now, when is someone going to trigger that Reunification referendum on the Island of Ireland and make life simpler for themselves? (Apart from the nutters with guns who might still disagree with the logic of it.)
|
|
|
Post by nucleusofswarm on Jan 19, 2021 14:26:50 GMT
I'm afraid, and I say so with the greatest of respect, that those attitudes simply reveal an ignorance of what customs actually is and does. I work for an importer, and have spent considerable time in recent months at webinars, online training, meetings with suppliers and freight companies, etc discussing brexit and how things will work after brexit. I've heard from retired senior Customs officials from the UK and Ireland, small and large haulage companies and they are at one scratching their heads in bewilderment at why any country would do such a demonstrably daft thing as leaving a single market that accounts for 45% of its trade. I'm sorry to report that it is not "solvable" - customs is a complex business and will always be so unless and until we get a world government and a global single market.
The whole discussion around the Irish border focussed lot on minimising customs and originally the brexiteers insisted that it wasn't a problem - it could be solved by technology. But it couldn't be - various experts from around the world testified at Parliamentary select committees the technology simply isn't there and isn't likely to be any time soon. The occasional maverick would pop up to say it could be done, but no one was convinced. If it was that easy, someone would have done it before now and the Irish border wouldn't have been such a big issue in the negotiations. I remember reading at some point over the last 2 or 3 years that even at the most high tech border in the world (Sweden/Norway) the average crossing time for a lorry was 40 minutes.
Customs professionals describe customs as the 2nd oldest profession (although in fairness a lot of professions jokingly describe themselves that way) - customs is primarily about regulating what comes into your country. The collection of tariffs is only a part of what customs does.
I can tell you from first hand experience how thin the trade deal is. People said that it was a bad deal and not much better than no deal at all. That was not sour grapes on the part of Remainers, it is the commercial reality. When you import from /export to the EU you have to go through the full customs procedures the same as trading with every other country. The only difference from the Free trade Agreement is that when you get to the box on the form where you enter the applicable tariff, instead of entering 5% or 10% or whatever, you enter 0%. But otherwise you go through the full customs procedures with all the associated time, cost, etc.
For large businesses that have experience of customs from trading with the rest of the world before brexit this is easier to absorb. For small businesses that have never had to do this before it is a major problem. Granted, there will be a learning curve effect and after the first few customs declarations it will be easier once people know what they are meant to be doing. But even after firms have gone through the learning curve, there will still be significant time/costs involved. We are debating internally if we will need to employ an additional person in our purchasing department to spend their time doing the paperwork - additional overhead cost that will eventually have to be passed on to customers via higher prices. In that respect, the reduction in activity levels due to lockdown has actually been the saving grace - it has got the government off the hook for the worst consequences of last minute nature of the brexit deal.
Also worth noting that agreement only covers British goods, i.e. goods produced in the UK. Again, speaking from personal experience, we have a supplier that is a wholesaler/distributer of goods produced in China. It does no production in the UK. Under the "rules of origin" these do not count as British goods and are not entitled to the preferential 0% tariff, so this company is paying tariffs when it exports to the EU - from their point of view, there may as well not have been a deal. What will that lead to? I don't know, but from talking to them, if they cannot maintain their market share in the EU and get their customers to accept a price rise then they are likely to cut jobs in the UK and open a branch in the EU.
All of the above are not isolated instances - it is being replicated to a greater or lesser extent in every company that trades with the EU. They are most definitely not, as you say in your post "minutiae". I can honestly say that I have not spoken to anyone who actually has to deal with these issues on a day to day basis - customers, suppliers, even some who voted Leave - who now thinks brexit was good idea, or at least who is willing to say so in public.
There's a couple of points you made that are worth picking up on: You say "Not a justification for remain vs leave . . . The decision to leave was not based on such minutiae" and then a couple of sentences later "Such matters were a core reason for voting out". Unless I'm missing something, aren't you contradicting yourself?
Secondly you say "we should not blame the UK for breaking away from the EU obsession with procedural red tape". It is worth noting that customs procedures are standardised via the WTO - the EU procedures are not any more onerous than any other county we trade with and they have not invented new procedures specially for the UK. The problem is that we do so much trade with the EU and that a lot of it is done by small business that don't really have the infrastructure in terms of IT/personnel to deal with customs. But more fundamentally, the logic of your argument does not stack up - you are actually making an argument for Remain. When we were a member of the EU, participating in the single market, we didn't have to do any of the procedural red tape in order to trade with the EU - so it is not as if we were leaving to get away from it. The procedural red tape only applies to non-members who want to trade with the EU. So your argument seems to be that we disliked EU red tape so much (even though it didn't apply to us as a member) that we left in order to get away from it but now, having left, we have become subject to the very red tape we wanted to get away from, even though it had never applied to us when we were a member. And this proves we were right to leave.
Brexit was always a populist cause, never a coherent rational strategy for the UK. It was never more than a few good slogans and tabloid headlines. Like all populist causes it was always about denying the complex reality, dismissing inconvenient facts as "minutiae" and instead offering simple solutions and slogans. Remember Michael Gove's line in debate "I think we're all tired of experts" - it maybe strikes a chord but it is the equivalent of a child sticking its fingers in its ears when it doesn't like what it hears.
I hope I'm wrong about brexit, I really really do. Thank you for your detailed response and perspective, lidar. Always welcome in what can be a rather high-tension discussion.
daver, I certainly don't think you're being deliberately obstinate, you've made some cogent points in the past in this forum, but the fact of the matter is it still reads, however unintentionally, that you're trying to exculpate the Conservatives from their part in why this situation is what it is by shifting blame towards the EU. As bizarre as the sandwich thing is, the EU did just spend four years having raspberries blown at it by two Conservative administrations who, despite controlling the government on both occassions and without a meaningful 'pro-remain' opponent in Parliament, couldn't agree on what Brexit meant, regardless of whatever motives voters on the ground had. Why should the Eu give us special treatment after all that ballyhoo?
Nor does saying 'but years from now' change the major problems we face now and which will likely not clear for sometime. Lidar is right. Saying 'but in the future' won't help a fishery like this one, as one example of many, which is losing who knows how much money and may not survive:
|
|
|
Post by johnhurtdoctor on Jan 19, 2021 23:29:02 GMT
|
|
lidar2
Castellan
You know, now that you mention it, I actually do rather like Attack of the Cybermen ...
Likes: 5,788
Member is Online
|
Post by lidar2 on Jan 25, 2021 8:55:20 GMT
|
|
|
Post by johnhurtdoctor on Jan 25, 2021 11:23:42 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Chakoteya on Jan 25, 2021 13:49:41 GMT
|
|
lidar2
Castellan
You know, now that you mention it, I actually do rather like Attack of the Cybermen ...
Likes: 5,788
Member is Online
|
Post by lidar2 on Jan 25, 2021 14:20:27 GMT
What's really required is for UK people to get off their cod and haddock habit and move over to hake, coley, ling, and all the other species readily caught in UK territorial waters, rather than leaving the fishermen with only foreign customers and the supermarkets et al buying imported fish for their frozen packets. Maybe the leavers should have done their homework and thought it through a bit more in the first place
|
|
|
Post by johnhurtdoctor on Jan 26, 2021 14:58:44 GMT
EU citizens offered financial incentives to leave UKBenjamin Morgan, who runs the EU homeless rights project at the Public Interest Law Centre, said: “It is clear from our casework that some of the most vulnerable EU citizens are yet to resolve their status. Barriers to application and delays in Home Office decision-making remain significant factors.
“This mixed messaging around settled status on the one hand and voluntary returns on the other, seriously undermines the government’s claim that the rights of vulnerable Europeans will be protected after Brexit.”
|
|
|
Post by Chakoteya on Jan 26, 2021 16:26:46 GMT
There goes 60% of all the care home staff then... too busy to cope with the new bureaucracy and do their jobs for minimum wage.
|
|
|
Post by sherlock on Jan 27, 2021 17:32:44 GMT
Another effect of Brexit bubbling under the surface, Britain’s not-so-little pigs aren’t making it to the European market.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 27, 2021 19:10:58 GMT
|
|
lidar2
Castellan
You know, now that you mention it, I actually do rather like Attack of the Cybermen ...
Likes: 5,788
Member is Online
|
Post by lidar2 on Jan 27, 2021 19:14:32 GMT
Another effect of Brexit bubbling under the surface, Britain’s not-so-little pigs aren’t making it to the European market. I'm sure there's a good pun to be made about the brexiteers' porkies
|
|
|
Post by Chakoteya on Jan 28, 2021 8:57:25 GMT
Why are the supermarkets still importing flavourless Danish bacon? Had gorgeous bacon and sausage from the farm down the road last week. Does his own slaughtering and processing (and smoking if you like that sort of thing), the only mileage on it was the distance I travelled there and back!
|
|
|
Post by number13 on Jan 28, 2021 15:35:19 GMT
It's not edifying is it? Something our government & medical authorities have got right in all this was to get well ahead on funding vaccine development, ordering vast quantities and signing contracts well ahead of time and doing the authorisation studies in a really efficient way. If the cross-Channel situation was reversed, the tirade of posts and broadcasts criticising Boris & co for not getting the vaccines would be off the scale. And blaming Brexit for it, no doubt.
The latest from the EU today is a truly strange announcement from Germany that they aren't giving some people a vaccine which they haven't got and haven't authorised for anyone. I'm sure there will be lots of people here and in other countries only too happy to get the doses that Germany haven't got and now don't want.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 28, 2021 16:11:22 GMT
It's not edifying is it? Something our government & medical authorities have got right in all this was to get well ahead on funding vaccine development, ordering vast quantities and signing contracts well ahead of time and doing the authorisation studies in a really efficient way. If the cross-Channel situation was reversed, the tirade of posts and broadcasts criticising Boris & co for not getting the vaccines would be off the scale. And blaming Brexit for it, no doubt.
The latest from the EU today is a truly strange announcement from Germany that they aren't giving some people a vaccine which they haven't got and haven't authorised for anyone. I'm sure there will be lots of people here and in other countries only too happy to get the doses that Germany haven't got and now don't want.
Oh absolutely. I have been reading about again it just now. Where the latest decision leaves the supply situation for the most vulnerable in the EU, for example. I suppose if we had remained within the EU, none of this would be happening. We would be as bereft of supplies and late in rolling out as everyone else and languishing at 2% of the population vaccinated as opposed to 11% at present. The threats to block exports of the Pfizer vaccine out of the EU also makes be question the way import and export rules are being used at present with other goods. In reference to the above Financial Times story about Pig exports, it notes that we gave the EU a six month transition period to embed new procedures, which the EU declined to reciprocate, resulting in in it being easier for EU suppliers to sell their goods to purchasers than those in the UK. It seems to me that there is an effort underway to make life difficult. I fail to see how one can blame Brexiteers and the Government and not the EU. Nor how it demonstrates that we are better off 'in'. www.spectator.co.uk/article/germany-has-just-undermined-the-eu-s-vaccine-argument
There also seems to be some effort to level the playing field still in some of the BBC reporting: Also worth reading for those with paywall access ( I bought the print edition today):
|
|
|
Post by The Brigadier on Jan 28, 2021 17:03:14 GMT
Much as I hate to dampen anyone's enthusiasm to spin the narrative in a certain way I'm afraid I cannot let this one go. From the Financial Times approx 4 hours ago. I'll include the link to the full article - the most interesting part is the area I've highlighted in bold. A statement by the Standing Vaccine Commission at the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s main public health agency, said there were “insufficient data currently available to ascertain how effective the vaccination is above 65 years”. For that reason, the commission said it was recommending that the vaccine only be used on people aged between 18 and 64. It added that the two shots already approved by the European Medicines Agency — from BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna — were judged to be “equivalent in terms of safety and efficacy”. The EMA is expected to reach a long-awaited decision on the approval of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine for use in the EU on Friday. According to a set of trial data released by the German vaccine commission, just two of 660 trial participants over the age of 65 got Covid-19 — one in the vaccinated and one in the control group — which is far below the number needed to draw statistical conclusions. That set of trial data showed an overall efficacy of 70.4 per cent. AstraZeneca rejected the German recommendation, saying the latest analysis of the clinical trial data for the vaccine supported efficacy in the over-65 age group. “We await a regulatory decision on the vaccine by the EMA in the coming days,” it said. The German recommendation came with EU and AstraZeneca locked in a crisis over vaccine supplies, after Brussels attacked the company’s “continued lack of clarity” on its delivery schedule. While both the EU and AstraZeneca said high-level emergency talks held on Wednesday night had been “constructive”, they did little to resolve the dispute over whether the company should deliver tens of millions more doses to the EU than it plans to over the first three months of the year. France and Italy both said they would wait for the EMA decision on Friday, before taking a view on whether to recommended the shot for the elderly. Emer Cooke, head of the EMA, said on Wednesday that there was no indication that it would need to restrict use of the jab based on age, but said she did not want to prejudge any outcomes. The EMA declined to comment on the German recommendation, pointing instead to a statement it made earlier on Thursday, saying it was still evaluating the vaccine. “We expect the committee’s recommendation on the authorisation of this vaccine tomorrow, on 29 January, and will communicate the assessment and its outcome shortly after the opinion has been adopted,” it said. Germany’s move could raise questions in the UK, where the vaccine is approved for all persons aged 18 and over. When the UK regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), approved it for emergency use last month, health authorities acknowledged there was a small amount of data on older populations, but that more results would become available this year. The MHRA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.So maybe not so much a bizarre or petulant decision but an extremely cautious one. Hopefully AstraZeneca will share their latest analysis soon to allay any fears. Because as a child of a parent in her late seventies who has had the AstraZeneca jab I am extremely alarmed that we are only finding out now that there was only "a small amount of data" available before the vaccine was approved last month. www.ft.com/content/0190dae8-f751-4876-8404-68a34d9be716
|
|
|
Post by nucleusofswarm on Jan 28, 2021 17:23:24 GMT
Oh absolutely. I have been reading about again it just now. Where the latest decision leaves the supply situation for the most vulnerable in the EU, for example. I suppose if we had remained within the EU, none of this would be happening. We would be as bereft of supplies and late in rolling out as everyone else and languishing at 2% of the population vaccinated as opposed to 11% at present. The threats to block exports of the Pfizer vaccine out of the EU also makes be question the way import and export rules are being used at present with other goods. In reference to the above Financial Times story about Pig exports, it notes that we gave the EU a six month transition period to embed new procedures, which the EU declined to reciprocate, resulting in in it being easier for EU suppliers to sell their goods to purchasers than those in the UK. It seems to me that there is an effort underway to make life difficult. I fail to see how one can blame Brexiteers and the Government and not the EU. Nor how it demonstrates that we are better off 'in'. www.spectator.co.uk/article/germany-has-just-undermined-the-eu-s-vaccine-argument
There also seems to be some effort to level the playing field still in some of the BBC reporting:
Also worth reading for those with paywall access ( I bought the print edition today):
Once again, I must come in and point out something: it is a bad look that Germany wants to cut into another country's supply of vaccines. No two ways about it, and for once, not something that can be levelled to Boris' now oft-documented incompetence, since we are talking about pharmaceuticals here.
However, 1) Neil's comment is irrelevant to the discussion and is just a puffed-up Twitter spat, so not sure why it's here as 'evidence'.
And 2) Trying to make this just about EU v Brexit (and by a publication that only has multiple Tories and their allies among its staff past and present at that, including Boris as a past editor) ignores a very major point that anyone following vaccine discourse for the last year can tell you: patenting the vaccines limited how much and, more importantly, who could make them. Astra can only make Astra, Bio can only make Bio etc. thus severely impacting quantity. Reason: it's big pharma, do I have to spell it out? Couple that with global shortages of administrations supplies like vials (https://www.businessinsider.com/covid-19-vaccine-experts-warn-glass-vials-planes-storage-shortage-2020-9?r=US&IR=T), and this was going to happen, in or out of EU. The hand of capitalism came in and, despite everyone telling them not to as it would cause exactly this problem, decided gold was more important than ending a major pandemic with the utmost expediency. It's not just Europe in a pickle about vaccines either - look at this.
And once again daver: be that as it may about the pigs, it also doesn't serve as a counter to the myriad of mistakes made by the Conservatives in Brexit preparations, or the self-inflicted problems that lidar very clearly pointed out.
|
|