Brexit No Deal - Thoughts?

Never discuss politics or religion as they say but, we’re all grown ups here! :slight_smile:

With all things COVID it’s easy to forget Brexit but it’s looking increasingly likely we will exit the EU with No Deal.

How will this affect you? Are you worried about the prospect or excited about some new opportunity this might present? Will we see a huge price increase of everyday commodities? Or a move to bring engineering/manufacturing back to these shores?

One of the things that will change is CE marked products will no longer be able to be sold in the UK. Manufacturers / importers will need to get them re approved against the relevant UK standards so they can apply the CUK mark. (Note separate rules apply to items sold or manufactured in Northern Ireland. The NI situation is complicated but it seems they will be working to EU standards and marking items with a different approval stamp. I am not sure what happens with products made in NI then imported into the rest of the UK)

How many suppliers worldwide will be willing to undertake the additional effort and cost of obtaining CUK approval remains to be seen.

There appears to be a one year transition when some products with CE markings will still be able to be sold in the UK (ex NI).

Yes to No 1 - its already begun to happen. And No to No 2 - not a chance. That ship sailed long ago and was nothing to do with the EU.

In my view its the worst decision this country has taken for a very long time - but its happened now and we will, for the next few years, have to make the best of it. Hopefully, those responsible for misleading the country will get their comeuppance.

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Tim_Davey: I couldn’t agree more. It IS the worst decision this country has taken for a very long time. I still recall the demeanour of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove the morning after on TV, one of disbelief, err, ‘What have we done?’ Buffoons!

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I was listening to a talk by a European astronomer recently, he reminded the audience that one of the changes that is about to happen in Europe is the ending of changing the clocks. The European parliament carried out a consultation about clock changes and the Germans voted for it to stop ( 70% of the responses were from Germany - the other EU countries including the UK managed 30%!). As a result the EU parliament have declared that clock changing will cease in 2021. However each country has been given the choice of staying on permanent Winter Time or Summer time so two adjacent European countries can have times that differ by up to two hours. As far as I am aware the EU countries have not yet individually declared if they are staying on Summer or Winter time.

Of course the UK does not have to follow this directive (depending on the withdrawal agreement) so may keep changing to Summer Time.

The biggest effect other than speaking to people in Europe will be to those who sell / use Radio Controlled Clocks. They will need programming for each countries time zone and of course if the UK keeps changing clocks you will not be able to use the UK radio signal in euro and likewise will not be able to use the German signal in the SE of England where it is often stronger than the MSF signal from Althorm.

Of course all the computers, phones and GPS’s will require changing to accommodate this as well.

What fun politics brings to time !

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We can be a nation of shopkeepers though by the number od stores closing that does not seem likely . The problem is what you sell in them - we have no iron, steel or coal industries any more. Agriculture is not able to cope with the demand for summer food in the winter so we will be back to winter greens and root crops as in the post WW2 period.

Hope we don’t have another winter like 1947 & 1963 when the ground was frozen for months and the farmers were not able to dig the root crops up.

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This is a stable door/horse bolted comment BUT what stuns me more than anything is the failure to ascertain “the deal” BEFORE the Referendum so that there was clear and honest information on which voters could make a decision.
It’s a basic point of commonsense and good business - if you’re buying/contracting for something you find out what the deal (read that as price/terms etc) is BEFORE making the decision . . . to have asked for an answer (and obtain in principle agreement) for the “what if?” question would have been a good idea.
I know that David Cameron didn’t expect for minute that the vote would be to exit - but who can make 100% accurate predictions . . . Trump has just found that out.

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