Britain outside the EU

Originally Posted by 1andrew1

British leg of the Orient Express killed. Who dunnit? Hard Brexit


https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2...-border-delays

I’m having a hard time trying to be sympathetic with this case. For a start, where’s the concern with the CO2 footprint they’re generating, sending locomotives, carriages, and passengers all the way to Venice, and then transporting them back again? Is there literally nowhere anywhere closer to London they could go to that has canals, such as Birmingham, the Venice of the Midlands?

For seconds, Brexit having been on the cards from the date of the referendum in 2016 and having actually occurred 3 years ago, it’s not as if the likelihood of this happening was unknown. I find it difficult to believe that a company that has being doing this for over 140 years was suddenly blindsided by the possibility of border controls…

j/k

Originally Posted by Hugh

I’m having a hard time trying to be sympathetic with this case. For a start, where’s the concern with the CO2 footprint they’re generating, sending locomotives, carriages, and passengers all the way to Venice, and then transporting them back again? Is there literally nowhere anywhere closer to London they could go to that has canals, such as Birmingham, the Venice of the Midlands?

For seconds, Brexit having been on the cards from the date of the referendum in 2016 and having actually occurred 3 years ago, it’s not as if the likelihood of this happening was unknown. I find it difficult to believe that a company that has being doing this for over 140 years was suddenly blindsided by the possibility of border controls…

j/k

I kind of see what you were trying to do there, but …

Passengers from London will be able to take the modern high-speed Eurostar to Paris and join the VSOE there, but “it’s not the same”, he said. “It is a great shame if that part of the experience is gone.”

Not that the VSOE is entirely authentic, compared with the original service, he added. “It was a much more businesslike train than most people imagine. The real thing would not have had pianos or lounges or bars, and certainly no balcony, whatever Kenneth Branagh thinks. You would have had sleeping cars and sat in your compartment in day mode most of the time.”

Meanwhile, in the realm of actual facts, Belmond has simply switched the London-Paris leg of the journey to Eurostar, which it was doing for a time during covid and the P&O debacle anyway, and in purely historical terms is actually truer to the way 19th and early 20th century passengers would have used the service. Sure, you no longer get to do the London-south coast leg aboard vintage British rolling stock, but on the plus side you no longer have to transfer to a cross channel ferry via a skanky ‘executive’ coach. And as soon as you arrive in Paris you can start cosplaying Hercule Poirot to your heart’s content.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Chris

Meanwhile, in the realm of actual facts, Belmond has simply switched the London-Paris leg of the journey to Eurostar, which it was doing for a time during covid and the P&O debacle anyway, and in purely historical terms is actually truer to the way 19th and early 20th century passengers would have used the service.

I'm not convinced 19th and early 20th century passengers would have had an experience remotely similar to going on a high speed train through the Channel Tunnel.

Originally Posted by 1andrew1

I'm not convinced 19th and early 20th century passengers would have had an experience remotely similar to going on a high speed train through the Channel Tunnel.

Believe it or not, they tried …

https://www.subbrit.org.uk/sites/cha...-1880-attempt/

There had been numerous proposals for a tunnel under the channel throughout the 19th Century including one by Napoleon, but the first serious attempt to build a tunnel came with an Act of Parliament in 1875 authorising the Channel Tunnel Company Ltd. to start preliminary trials. This was an Anglo French project with a simultaneous Act of Parliament in France. By 1877 several shafts had been sunk to a depth of 330 feet at Sangatte in France but initial work carried out at St. Margaret’s Bay, to the east of Dover had to be abandoned due to flooding. In 1880 under the direction of Sir Edward Watkin, Chairman of the South Eastern Railway, a new shaft (No. 1 shaft) was sunk at Abbot’s Cliff, between Dover and Folkestone with a horizontal gallery being driven along the cliff, 10 feet above the high water mark. This seven foot diameter pilot tunnel was eventually to be enlarged to standard gauge with a connection to the South Eastern Railway.

Fear of it being used by a foreign invader eventually put a stop to it. Plus ca change.

In all seriousness though, the willingness to even try to build something so challenging with the technology available to them in the latter 19th century does rather illustrate my point. The Orient Express was there to get busy people from A to B, it was not a gin palace on rails. The Eurostar connection is in that sense truer to the spirit of the original, even if it doesn’t use vintage rolling stock to get you to where the Orient Express always originally terminated, i.e. France, not London.

Originally Posted by Chris

I’m having a hard time trying to be sympathetic with this case. For a start, where’s the concern with the CO2 footprint he’s generating, sending consignments of his own product to France to get dyed and then transporting it back again? Is there literally nowhere anywhere closer to Derbyshire that could do it?

For seconds, Brexit having been on the cards from the date of the referendum in 2016 and having actually occurred 3 years ago, it’s not as if the likelihood of this happening was unknown. I find it difficult to believe someone who has fought so hard to build and maintain his business was suddenly blindsided by the possibility of import/export tariffs …

… especially when, third, he is so hyper-aware of his industry’s flight to the far east and purports to be taking a stand against it. I find his logic somewhat confusing here. Either he thinks the offshoring of industry is a good thing or a bad thing. Or is it only bad when other people do it? Because it looks to me very much as if he wants to off-shore bits of his business whenever it’s convenient.

In reality, sovereign governments use tariff barriers deliberately to discourage the behaviour this business wished to continue post Brexit. That was entirely foreseeable, and is entirely how regaining control of import/export flows is supposed to work. It sounds very much to me as if an awful lot of special pleading has gone on here, and it has spent a lot of time in court or some other appeals process, and the business has just lost. If the writer of the letter really did bet the entire farm on a different outcome then more fool him.

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/som...ho-went-viral/

Dyeing the lace within the UK isn’t an option, he says, because the domestic textile industry long lost the infrastructure to do so.

“So the companies that have the right machinery don’t exist,” he says. “Making lace – it uses different machinery to dying fabric. If you think of lace, it’s a structure full of holes, it’s very delicate – you need different kit to say, dyeing denim or shirting fabric or something.”

It’s only beginning to come out now because, basically, HMRC is just starting to do audits on people.”

Did the news come out of the blue, I ask?

“Yes, because our audit started in January. We started preparing documents for them in December and they came, did the audit, basically said everything was fine, wanted some extra documentation on our exports to and imports from the dyehouse.” Then came the demand.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Chris

Believe it or not, they tried …

https://www.subbrit.org.uk/sites/cha...-1880-attempt/

Fear of it being used by a foreign invader eventually put a stop to it. Plus ca change.

In all seriousness though, the willingness to even try to build something so challenging with the technology available to them in the latter 19th century does rather illustrate my point. The Orient Express was there to get busy people from A to B, it was not a gin palace on rails. The Eurostar connection is in that sense truer to the spirit of the original, even if it doesn’t use vintage rolling stock to get you to where the Orient Express always originally terminated, i.e. France, not London.

I'm pleased we got there in the end with the Channel Tunnel. They certainly did amazing construction work in the past despite not having today's technology.

Interestingly, back in 1888 Orient Express trains were going from London, so it's not a recent invention. This poster on Wiki even suggests no passports were checked once you were on the Continent!

Originally Posted by 1andrew1

I'm pleased we got there in the end with the Channel Tunnel. They certainly did amazing construction work in the past despite not having today's technology.

Interestingly, back in 1888 Orient Express trains were going from London, so it's not a recent invention. This poster on Wiki even suggests no passports were checked once you were on the Continent!

That was simply a through-ticketing offer, which Belmond will continue to offer, using the Eurostar between London and Paris rather than a vintage train from London to Calais, followed by a ferry and transfer in Calais. The only passenger trains to ever actually cross the channel via ferry did so from 1936-1980 (with a break for WW2) - and these were never part of the Orient Express operation. Initially they were run by a French company before being taken on by British Rail towards the end. The actual Orient Express train, i.e. the physical vehicle comprised of engine and rolling stock, has always terminated in France, either at Paris or Calais.

Far fewer EU laws to be scrapped than planned

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/b...88ad79d5fdd208

Ministers are to dramatically scale back the number of EU laws to be scrapped by the end of the year as part of Rishi Sunak’s bonfire of Brussels rules and regulations.

In a concession to opponents of the Retained EU Law Bill, Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, is to publish a list of 800 laws which will be removed from the UK statute book in an attempt to get the legislation through the House of Lords.

The move has infuriated Brexiteer MPs, who warned that it would only amount to about 20 per cent of existing EU laws on the UK statute book. They accused Badenoch of being “unambitious” and giving in to peers who are threatening to neuter the legislation.

The compromise was revealed by Badenoch at a private briefing with members of the European Research Group (ERG) of Brexiteer MPs…

…Those laws which are not explicitly named on the list of 800 will remain on the statute book to be looked at again “in due course”. The government is also expected to commit to retaining the most high-profile EU-derived laws, including the working-time directive and environmental legislation.

[Sephiroth]

Big deal.

[1andrew1]

I see Badenoch was given the task of telling the Brexit hard-liners that they live in the United Kingdom and not the Unicorn Kingdom and reviewing all these laws takes time. She can't be too happy!

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Big deal.

I was told it was, we'll scrap all these laws and red tape they said, turns out we'll keep most of them and add to the red tape, what an absolute farce

[Sephiroth]

But at least we're out of the EU and rule from Brussels. We can now plow our own furrow and hope that a government can assist that (Labour won't).

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

But at least we're out of the EU and rule from Brussels. We can now plow our own furrow and hope that a government can assist that (Labour won't).

Brexit Britain is ploughing her own farrow when it comes to the economy - we were the only G7 economy to shrink last year and we have higher inflation than our EU peers.

[jfman]

The real worry for the Brexiteers is that the shorter the distance between the EU and UK the significant risk of ending up back in the Single Market.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by jfman

The real worry for the Brexiteers is that the shorter the distance between the EU and UK the significant risk of ending up back in the Single Market.

We're certainly putting some distance between ourselves and the EU in economic terms, just not the way round we were promised!