Price impact of the "deal"?

[MikelBikel]

The haulier interviewed outlines all the extra red tape/delays/tests/fines, etc, costs and what can go wrong :-(

 

[Scorpio]

@MikelBikel interesting video, thanks.

I have a lot of experience working with businesses of all sizes when they need to change their computer systems. Complicated projects often take years (everyone involved needs to agree what changes are needed, the changes are then made, everything is tested to make sure it works as expected, user guides and technical manuals are written and issued, then staff are trained how to use the new systems). It is totally unrealistic to announce the new requirements last week and expect that staff will be trained and using the modified systems next week.

 

[Deleted member 33385]

I think I'm going to snap up a battery or two, before all the prices are hiked by a hundred or few, from the UK, while the prices are OK. Sorry, I really didn't intend for any of that to rhyme, but it does seem to be buying time. The question is from where? (drops mic, while everyone cringes)

 

[Benjahmin]

In the mid and late '70's I was a roadie working for various sized bands. When touring in Europe we had to have a thing called a Carnet. Each flight case on the truck had to be numbered or otherwise identified and have it's contents itemised. When exiting a country we would present two copies of the carnet to customs. They would stamp both, keep one and give us one back. On entering the next country we would do the same, so creating a paper trail of origin of the items on the truck and avoiding any import/export charges. In theory, any customs officer at any border control could pick any item on the list and demand to see it. Or indeed demand that the whole truck was unloaded and every item checked. In the years of doing this job it never happened, nor did I hear of it happening to any crew (even when transiting East Germany to get to west Berlin). There was a lot of paper involved (bureaucracies can't run without chewing through the stuff) and it did have some hiccups, but mostly it ran smoothly and we got everywhere on time. Mainly because who could be bothered?
The new system - whatever it's to be - will settle into a routine and trade will go on, it always has, despite the best efforts of governments and politicians. It will create a mountain of paper and ballache, but it will get done and be streamlined along the way.
As to prices, they're going up anyway because every currency is being eroded by endless money printing. Heard the phrase, 'We will do whatever it takes'?

 

[egroover]

I think I'm going to snap up a battery or two, before all the prices are hiked by a hundred or few, from the UK, while the prices are OK. Sorry, I really didn't intend for any of that to rhyme, but it does seem to be buying time. The question is from where? (drops mic, while everyone cringes)

I did this in the last couple of months as was expecting tax and duty hits post 1st Jan.
Got myself a couple of Hailong 36v 17.5ah Samsung celled batteries with chargers that exactly fitted my existing Hailong battery holder from a Aliexpress seller for about £180 each delivered, very pleased with them.
Just got an order in a few days ago for a BBS01 250w before the prices hike up. That's me hopefully sorted for the next few years

 

[richtea99]

It will create a mountain of paper and ballache, but it will get done and be streamlined along the way.

But never quite as good as the outgoing system. A bit slower, a bit more expensive.

A bit like taking a 15.5mph bike design, adding some extra wiring and an extra controller that absorbs a few watts, and ending up with a 14.5mph bike. Oh, and a revised pricing as of 1st Jan - 4% on RRP.

That's the Sovereign Suck-E-Tup model, sir. But it's still an electric bike, so this is fine.

 

[Benjahmin]

From long life observation all governments/administrations caim to make things better. In reality mostly all they seem to manage is to make government itself bigger, more cumbersome and innefficient and so more tax hungry.
The more an administration seeks to micro-manage the bigger the 'unfair' anomolies get, requiring cumbersome tweaks and patches.
A wise man once said to me, 'People get the governmant they deserve', there's a nutty one to think through.

 

[Bonzo Banana]

It's important to realise that the people of the UK ultimately damaged our economy causing huge debts. We imported a huge amount of products creating a huge trading deficit that led to huge debts because we failed to compete in the EU for various reasons. The issue is I guess that because the UK was inside the EU ultimately politicians couldn't do anything about it and add to that the huge funds going into the EU was a double whammy for our economy. Outside the EU gives us more control but the control still has to be wielded by competent politicians who will steer the economy correctly. At least the funds going into the EU will dry up. It's a no win scenario though because we now have huge debts that could take 40-50 years to pay off and we probably won't even be able to start paying off those debts for 3-4 years if our economy goes reasonably well.

We pay about £60-65 billion a year in interest alone which is about £2k or more for every working person so that's dead money doing nothing for our economy. Just think when we start paying back the debt itself that could be £4-5k of income tax per person. As a country we are going to be much poorer sadly for a long time but managing our economy is the important thing to maintain a good quality of life despite not having so many material items. That's the situation when you build up huge debts and sell off the family silver to stay afloat.

A huge chunk of that money that we borrowed went pretty much straight to the EU so we borrowed like mad for no real benefit to the UK population.

For those interested the office of national statistics has pretty much all the information you need and is clear unbiased data without an agenda that you often get in the mainstream media. Just search for the relevant data regarding public sector debt, trade in-balance, EU taxation etc. Ultimately though everything is summed up with the NIIP (net international investment position) and how much debt the country owes after all assets are taken into account.

Home - Office for National Statistics

The UK's largest independent producer of official statistics and the recognised national statistical institute of the UK.

www.ons.gov.uk

I won't pretend I have confidence in our politicians to turn around our economy but at least they now have the tools to do so. Turning around our economy within the EU was pretty much an impossibility we would have to lower wages and conditions to very low levels so we could compete with the cheapest economies of Europe and still be faced with that huge level of EU taxation and payments.

I know many people are upset about leaving the EU because it is an inconvenience to them but I really think people need to look beyond that and understand the dire state of our economy and the huge debts. It's not hard to see most British manufacturing companies are long gone and many companies now are foreign owned plus retail which used to be dominated by UK companies is now also mainly foreign owned with companies like Amazon, ebay taking a huge share of retail. Even in the media companies like netflix and google are removing huge sums from our economy. You can't just keep borrowing to pay for that creating huge debts for our children and grandchildren who face horrific poverty because of our selfish lifestyles.

 

[Woosh]

I won't pretend I have confidence in our politicians to turn around our economy but at least they now have the tools to do so. Turning around our economy within the EU was pretty much an impossibility we would have to lower wages and conditions to very low levels so we could compete with the cheapest economies of Europe and still be faced with that huge level of EU taxation and payments.

the deal as it is, does not allow us to undercut EU's standard on general taxation, environment and labour protection to gain an advantage. So it's not possible to turn the UK into Singapore on Thames. Furthermore, Singapore relies on cheap labour from Malaysia. You have to see the mass of workers crossing the border at Johor Bahru every morning to see what made Singapore into a manufacturing success.
If you look for a culprit, look no further than Margaret Thatcher. She could not see a future in traditional manufacturing so she transformed this country in to a 'share owning democracy'. Manufacturing yields its importance to financial services or 'fintech'. That is, lend people who need to borrow a lot of money then go borrow the money from the international market and make a profit on lending. Result: 110% mortgage + subprime CDOs and bank bailout.
Why work in a factory when you can just borrow to invest in properties/shares?
Meanwhile, successive governments borrowed to cut taxes.
They are the reasons we are where we are, little to do with our £11 billion a year EU membership fee.

 

[Bonzo Banana]

the deal as it is, does not allow us to undercut EU's standard on general taxation, environment and labour protection to gain an advantage. So it's not possible to turn the UK into Singapore on Thames. Furthermore, Singapore relies on cheap labour from Malaysia. You have to see the mass of workers crossing the border at Johor Bahru every morning to see what made Singapore into a manufacturing success.
If you look for a culprit, look no further than Margaret Thatcher. She could not see a future in traditional manufacturing so she transformed this country in to a 'share owning democracy'. Manufacturing yields its importance to financial services or 'fintech'. That is, lend people who need to borrow a lot of money then go borrow the money from the international market and make a profit on lending. Result: 110% mortgage + subprime CDOs and bank bailout.
Why work in a factory when you can just borrow to invest in shares?
Meanwhile, successive governments borrowed to cut taxes.
They are the reasons we are where we are, little to do with our £11 billion a year EU membership fee.

Why is Singapore mentioned and Margaret Thatcher never transformed the country in a share owning democracy she decimated industry and sold off assets in order to balance the books. At that point she was still dealing with the horrifically poor deal Edward Heath had got us joining the EU which she later got improved slightly. Selling off those assets only led to more borrowing i.e. selling off housing stock cheap and then paying far higher housing benefit for the unemployed and low paid who then had to rent private housing. It was typical short termism that has created so many issues. The damage the EU has caused to our finances goes far beyond the EU membership fee a huge amount of taxes and tariffs are paid to the EU and of course being within a protected marketplace when you have very little industry to protect is massively damaging to our economy as we have to pay the higher costs of those products which led to our huge trading deficit with the EU and massive borrowing.

Obviously sales taxes vary across Europe as do wages but my point was the only way you compete with the EU from within the EU was by lowering wages etc but long term the road is much easier outside the EU and we can protect workers conditions and the burden of EU taxation is gone. There are huge reasons to be positive but unfortunately there are also huge debts too that will take decades to pay back. We were always in a no win scenario but staying in the EU was just sinking further into the **** financially.

Now that we set our own sales taxes this gives us massive benefits plus we can buy cheaper lower cost goods from the world market. We may even get the fringe benefit that the £ drops in value.

There is no way you can look at the data and not see EU membership as massively damaging to our economy, not only the huge trade deficit with the EU but the huge payments and taxes to the EU.

Again I would urge anyone interested to look at the office of national statistics site. I'd always voted liberal democrat in my local constituency of Yeovil and I voted to remain much to my shame but then realised after taking the time to check out the data that my party was wholly incompetent they didn't even have the debate within it about the damage caused by the EU which both Labour and Conservatives had. I asked a lib democrat member about the EU and his answer was utterly mindless with no understanding of basic economics which led me to do my own research and look at the unbiased statistics. Idealism is a wonderful thing but back in the real world we have to pay our way in the world. Sadly the reality is huge debts which continue to grow.

 

[richtea99]

Being primarily a service economy is fine as long as those services are required (which they currently are). Physical goods aren't the only thing of value in the world.

However, as the banking capital of Europe cutting yourself off from Europe isn't smart.
Follow that up with the double whammy of excluding services from the Brexit deal, and we're looking at an 'interesting' decade.
It's going to be a bumpy ride.

If I was younger and less rooted, I'd be considering which other countries could benefit from my skills. That thought would never have occurred to me 20 years ago.

 

[Woosh]

my point was the only way you compete with the EU from within the EU was by lowering wages etc but long term the road is much easier outside the EU and we can protect workers conditions and the burden of EU taxation is gone.

EFTA countries (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland) don't go down that road but opt for high tech manufacturing.
The new deal is very thin, you can't even send a packet of cigarettes to someone in the EU without customs declaration nor buy medicine from any pharmacy in the EU.
The cost of 250 million customs declarations to businesses a year alone is roughly equal to the old £11 billion a year membership fees. Worse still, we can't sell to the EU duty free if the goods has more than 40% imported parts from outside the EU like e-bike and automotive parts. That difficulty can only be overcome if we stayed in the customs union. Theresa May tried that without success.

 

[Bonzo Banana]

EFTA countries (Switzerland, Norway, Iceland) don't go down that road but opt for high tech manufacturing.
The new deal is very thin, you can't even send a packet of cigarettes to someone in the EU without customs declaration nor buy medicine from any pharmacy in the EU.
The cost of 250 million customs declarations to businesses a year alone is roughly equal to the old £11 billion a year membership fees. Worse still, we can't sell to the EU duty free if the goods has more than 40% imported parts from outside the EU like e-bike and automotive parts. That difficulty can only be overcome if we stayed in the customs union. Theresa May tried that without success.

I don't really see those countries as primarily high tech manufacturing, Switzerland has a large banking sector and Norway is more oil and fishing and both are very rich and wanted to keep that wealth hence keeping out of the EU.

If your family finances are basically relying on borrowing and you spend more than you earn and have done so for many years then you know you have to stop that and reverse that situation which is no different to the UK on a larger scale, it should be unacceptable to everyone that we have racked up £2 trillion of debt especially now we have added hundreds of billions because of the pandemic on top of it. It should be unacceptable that we borrow to pay for EU membership and run a trading deficit. You can't sugar coat it, we have failed to compete in the EU and whether it is mainly due to the EU or ourselves whatever the reason you have to get out of that situation. I personally feel many of the policies of the EU have been detrimental to the UK as a primary cause but it really doesn't matter if you put all the blame on the UK itself it is still a situation we have to get out of. The huge debts and crippling interest charges should be every UK citizen's focus.

Lets not forget their are huge debts across the EU with many countries in a terrible financial situation. There are huge issues ahead for EU finances. It isn't going to be plain sailing for the EU we should see a series of financial crisis's across the EU in coming years. If you look at public sector debts and pension liabilities across the EU. It is quite possible leaving the EU will be seen as a stroke of brilliance in 5 to 10 years time. Germany is a huge winner in the EU but there are many crumbling economies around it in Europe. You only have to see the US's net debt of $14 trillion to understand how dodgy world finances are but all we can do is try to put our own house in order.

 

[sjpt]

Norway is more oil and fishing.

Yes, it was lucky not to have a Maggie Thatcher to blow the benefits of its oil riches.

 

[Woosh]

It is quite possible leaving the EU will be seen as a stroke of brilliance in 5 to 10 years time.

time will tell I suppose.
Happy New Year to you.

 

[PP100]

Shipping

 

[egroover]

All my usual euro suppliers now not offering shipping to the UK... Mantel.com, bike24.net, bike-discount.de, rosebikes etc
Wiggle, CRC, Tredz etc must be loving it...

Taking back control, but losing the choice, that's Brexshit for you

 

[flecc]

There is no way you can look at the data and not see EU membership as massively damaging to our economy, not only the huge trade deficit with the EU but the huge payments and taxes to the EU.

Utter nonsense. Germany is an EU member and lacks these imaginary problems.

They do better because they are better at competing in almost all spheres than we are.
.

 

[Fordulike]

There is no way you can look at the data and not see EU membership as massively damaging to our economy, not only the huge trade deficit with the EU but the huge payments and taxes to the EU.

There's a huge trade deficit, because we have nothing to offer anymore. The steel and car industries to name but a few. Even Dyson has seen the light.

 

[richtea99]

Utter nonsense. Germany is an EU member and lacks these imaginary problems.

They do better because they are better at competing in almost all spheres than we are.
.

I'm sure some of those companies will resume shipping to the UK once they've had a chance to digest the finer details. However, it helps to put your EU head on - do I really want to ship to 27 countries with no friction, and then go the extra mile and ship to the 28th one with extra hassle, when it was seamless & easy last year?

That depends entirely on making a profit from the 28th country, and how much 'hassle', i.e. additional cost, duty, & time.
Three things can happen:
1. Adventurous/desperate EU companies will absorb the extra cost, duty & time
2. Comfy EU companies (or ones that have little UK business) will not bother shipping to the UK
3. Some in the middle will absorb a little, and charge a little more

Therefore we can expect EU prices to go up, and/or the supply & choices to shrink.

The one thing that we can be sure isn't going to happen is a decrease in prices or increased supply from the EU. Those particular sunny uplands will need to come from ourselves, or the rest of the world. The above 3 points still apply to the RoW - but with extra distance thrown in. If this forum is lucky, that may work well for cycle goods because they're not perishable. I don't see it kickstarting a revival in UK industry though.