"The company said that it had taken the decision due to the UK government telling overseas firms that they must apply and collect British taxes when selling to customers here, with the point at which VAT is collected, for example, moved from the point of importation to the point of sale."
It would be difficult for London policy makers to come up with trade rules that are as damaging and onerous as the ones from Brussels. But I have every confidence that they are up to the task.
> come up with trade rules that are as damaging and onerous as the ones from Brussels
Simply not true.
EU has made trading free and effortless between the 27 member states for the first time in history. And for companies shipping to the EU it is only a one time regulatory hit and then you benefit from a single, coherent market.
Also the world needs a trading bloc that actually believes in climate change, worker rights, consumer rights, privacy etc.
This is one big surveillance super state. Companies e.g. have to submit all their invoices, bank accounts to gov in real time. Some member states even require separate bank accounts to store VAT. Bureaucracy is just gargantuan. If you think it is easy then likely you are doing something wrong.
Humbug. Yes, in Estonia, all invoices above EUR 1000 have to be declared. Bank accounts etc. do not have to be submitted and there is no real-time access. The reason for the law is VAT fraud that basically dropped after its introduction. No averse effects have been reported.
Bit of a stretch to claim this is true for all of Europe if a few Eastern European countries purportedly do this, isn’t it?
Doing business across the EU borders is mostly easy, painless, and free.
Shame it didn't just stay a trading bloc. This expansion of power is really unpopular and enabled Brexit in the first place.
It's also probably a proxy for immigration, mostly of the illegal variety, but also legal within the Schengen area. People don't take too kindly to having a supernational body tell them who is allowed to enter their country, stay for long periods of time, and their very loose definition of refugee. I know that some nations are politically very much in alignment with the EU's immigration push (Germany is obvious) but clearly the UK isn't. The EU should not have touched this issue.
The single area interest rate also creates a lot of economic tension that perhaps the average joe can't articulate, but he certainly is affected by it.
As a former resident of Italy, I'm a bit stumped by "logistics center in Italy". Italy's a great place for many things - I could talk about it at length - but shipping and logistics is not one that comes immediately to mind.
Well, if you are a huge Italian bicycle saddle maker, and you buy a small boutique British bicycle saddle maker, and you decide to centralise your logistics, where are you going to do it?
Not Brooks saddles, though. They are still made in the UK. However, cheaper immigrant labor has been used, albeit not Chinese. Brooks' own newsletter reveals that at least some current workers in this British firm with a hundred-year-old tradition are recently-arrived Poles.
One place where Brooks has really diminished its fine reputation is handlebar tape: Brooks leather handlebar tape is made in a Chinese factory with just the Brooks logo stamped on it, and it is nowhere near the quality of the famed saddles.
I imagine it's cheaper if you do most of your sales in continental Europe and just sell some units in the UK. Would make more sense to just have one logistics center even if it results in some items being shipped back and forth.
There's no why in what you said, just stating the same premise that I did.
Selle Italia happens to be located in northern Italy, where most of this immigration is concentrated. Granted it's in Veneto and the highest concentration is in Lombardia/Lombardy...but that region has half as many and they're right next to each other.
Except the "working" part of it was already done in the UK here. It's literally stated in the first part of the article.
And again, Italy has mass-imported Chinese immigrants to perform its textiles (and other industries') labor. Just because Italy is the "center for X" doesn't mean Italians are the ones doing X.
I thought so as well until I got shipped a product I ordered from the Apple store from Italy. Then I remembered I got an English book I ordered from Amazon.de shipped from Italy.
You should be paying VAT if you order from the UK to the EU.
I just tried out checking out an item on Amazon.co.uk with Finland as the destination. On the checkout page I have four different charges: items, postage & packaging, import fees deposit, and exchange rate guarantee fee.
So looks like Amazon is removing the VAT from the item (it was £39.99 on the item page and it drops to £33.32 on the checkout page) and then charging your local VAT as an up-front deposit. So if it's anything like my Amazon.co.jp orders, you just throw money at Amazon and you get the item in your hands without any customs hassle.
It's not an argument against democracy, it's an argument for sensible government.
It's a very, very bad idea to hold a referendum along the lines of "vote no for the status quo, vote yes for, erm, something, we'll let the Yes side make up some stuff about unicorns and cricket playing vicars for you". The vote should have been for a realistic deal, with article 50 notification contingent on having agreed said deal in principle. People had _no_ idea what they were voting for, and that's entirely Cameron's government's fault.
That doesn't mean that referendums are necessarily bad in principle, though.
In Ireland we have quite a few of these, but generally the government will say what it intends to do with a Yes result. When people voted yes on the abortion referendum, say, they weren't just voting for "more abortions, please" in the abstract, they were told ahead of time what would happen if they did vote yes.
If people are generally upset about state of things for possibly various different reasons, and you only give them one lever to pull to "fix it", they're going to pull that lever.
It was Cameron bluffing and the lever was the nuclear option. If it went the other way, he'd probably have more leverage to negotiate. Well, surprise. Too bad. I already miss the poor buggers. If Scotland holds another referendum, they're pretty much screwed because Northern Ireland is going to be next. I hope Nigel is happy now.
Well, also, Cameron would never have expected to be in a position to hold the referendum. He made it as an election promise in an election where pretty much no-one expected a Tory majority; at best they were expected to be part of a coalition. Then things changed, and here we are...
I’m not a constitutional expert so I don’t have high certainty in my own belief, but: Can Scotland actually do anything about it if Boris Johnson just stamped his foot and says “no you cannot have a referendum”?
"The agreement reached was that Northern Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, and would remain so until a majority of the people both of Northern Ireland and of the Republic of Ireland wished otherwise. Should that happen, then the British and Irish governments are under "a binding obligation" to implement that choice."
I have heard people explain (in person) this as the reason they personally voted yes!
I think this is one of the three major factors that got it anywhere near a 50/50 outcome: 1. Voting on something as vauge as can be, 2. lies and manipulation, 3. single lever problem
The EU doesn't allow negotiation on withdrawal until article 50 is invoked. There was no ability to negotiate any deal of any kind until the UK confirmed it was leaving.
I don't believe there's any mechanism to go from full EU membership to the EEA when you're already a member? That is more or less the same thing as negotiating to leave before article 50 is invoked.
The UK was already a member of the EEA, ok it was by virtue of it's EU membership in the end, but the UK was a founder member. If the UK had decided that it wanted to maintain it when it left the EU I can't imagine who would have objected?
It's an argument against referendums, especially when they only require a simple majority required to pass. The Brexit referendum passed with about 52% of votes in favor -- not exactly a landslide.
Really big changes ought to have a higher bar than just a simple majority. A 2/3 majority is a much higher bar to overcome, and in the case of a referendum, it would mean the result represents the consensus view of the people, not just one side in a bitterly divided close fight.
I've long argued referendums ought to require supermajorities based on how easy the change voted on is to undo and an assessment of the extent of the change. It encourages the side that wants change to aim to find ways to minimise the change they ask for and maximise the viability of reversal to lower the bar for the vote.
Achieving a reasonably objective assessment of what the required majority should be would be very hard, though.
While it’s very tempting to say that (especially since Farage said something like “52% would be unfinished business” shortly before the result), IIRC the distribution of Leave voters was much more politically relevant than it merely being 52% – from what I remember it was such that, under the FPTP/constituency combination, it represented an overwhelming majority of constituencies if it had been a GE.
One man's "cutting off your nose to spite your face" is another man's "sticking to your ideological guns even when you make less money that way".
If anything being able to occasionally execute on controversial things like this seems like an argument in favor of democracy. How often have we heard of X or Y is easier in a dictatorship because the approximate half of the population that disagree can just be steamrolled and progress can happen without them? To me things like Brexit are proof that democracy can be just as versatile when it wants to.
People wanted out (for a variety of reasons, some better than others). They got out (with some find print). They're gonna pay for it. But nothing is ever free. It might be stupid, but the people get what they want even if it's stupid. Welcome to democracy, the system that sucks less than all the alternatives.
Ideology wasn’t thin in the ground for either the leftist Brexiteers, “Nationalists”, paternalistic One Nation stories or for the Ever Closer Union lot.
The main complaint about the whole process was that it was far too ideological instead of being benignly technocratic.
No, it's more complicated than that. It's an argument against putting your long-term foreign policy up to a simple majority vote on only one occasion and in a way that one of the outcomes hasn't been clearly defined which allows for anyone to claim anything they want about the potential benefits.
Brexit is equally an argument against giving up your national sovereignty to a coalition government.
Regardless of opinions, this plays out like a bad marriage and divorce. Joining the EU requires good will to get in, but there's no amicable way to leave. Why would anyone join now seeing these circumstances?
Once you're in, you're in for life. Ride or die. Might as well join a gang.
Except, the UK was allowed to leave, and the deal they got is probably not that different from the kind of trade deal they would have had with the EU if they had never joined.
The UK didn't revert to WTO rules in their trade with the EU. Instead, they got a deal that gave them fewer trade barriers with the EU than most countries have to deal with.
It’s a good deal, but only for the EU. They have a goods trade surplus with the UK and they retain their free trade agreement. The UK has a services trade surplus with the EU (particularly financial services) and that is not included in the deal.
It’s not all that surprising that the UK lost out in the negotiations - this is what tends to happen when a smaller economy negotiates with a larger one.
> Why would anyone join now seeing these circumstances?
Because the world is moving to being dominated by the big 3 trading blocs: US, EU and China. All in an environment where the WTO is diminished and bilateral relationships become the norm.
If you are outside one of these blocs increasingly you will become weaker and more irrelevant for trade and services. And far less able to defend your interests.
History is replete with pure democracy leading to tyranny. Beyond just Brexit, it's not out of the realm of possibility that the 'majority' could vote to nullify constitutional checks to the power of a president, to term length, to guarantees on the protection of individual rights and freedoms, etc. Of course any such votes are deemed to be in the interest of the 'people'. The ancients and the US at its founding were wise enough to mix democracy, the at the moment will of the people, with various checks, balances and buffers. The US seems to be moving to more and more pure democracy. In my humble opinion this is dangerous, a slippery slope, a camel's nose under the tent, etc.
The founders were indeed wise in requiring 2/3 to amend the constitution as well as establishing the electoral college in lieu of popular vote. What they failed at in my opinion is not having any criminal penalties for anyone including politicians and judges for violating the constitution.
I disagree on the Electoral College -- it's a system designed so that votes aren't equal in value. If you live in California, your presidential vote is worth less than a vote in Wyoming[0]. Similarly, the cap on the size of the House of Representatives also means that larger states will generally see less representation per capita than smaller states. (Note: I'm leaving the Senate out, given that it's designed to assign two votes per state without regard to population).
A referendum is great at giving legislators or executives a priority -- my home state of New Jersey has been working on marijuana legalization for years, but it's largely stalled in the statehouse. The 2020 election featured a ballot question on legalization, and the overwhelming "yes" (more than 2/3 of the electorate supports the move) helped kick off another round of legislation (that, in a sadly predictable pattern, seems to be stuck once again).
Here in Florida, we got so tired of the stalling that we wrote medical marijuana into a 2016 constitutional amendment initiative, since that's the only way to get something approaching a law without legislative cooperation.
The original system for the Electoral College (where some electors from a state could vote differently than others) made sense. So did having the vice president be the runner up (before the 14th Amendment) - this is why the VP getting the ability to break ties in the senate made more sense too.
The current EC implementation is terrible however. Small states already get massive overrepresentation in the Senate, they don't need a second system to weigh in their favor.
I very much want to see one person, one vote, with approval voting (i.e. pick ALL the people you're happy to see being president, the winner gets the job) being used for presidential elections.
The last sentence sounds like many politicians in my state if Oregon. Voters are to dumb to be able to vote. Point in case the voters of Oregon have multiple times voted (overwhelmingly) to not issue driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. The legislature this year voted to give illegal aliens driver’s licenses. Is this not a prime example of tyranny?
> Point in case the voters of Oregon have multiple times voted to not issue driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.
I don't understand why. Licensed or not, they're going to drive. If they're in the country illegally, they're not gonna care they're driving illegally. Isn't it safer for others on the road if they're made to take the appropriate tests and have insurance like everyone else? If you're involved in an accident with an undocumented person, isn't it better to be able to get their insurance information?
In this case, I think the voters really are being dumb. Or they're being fed a pack of lies, such as getting driver's licenses will make undocumented aliens eligible for other benefits.
Maybe these legislators are able to see both sides of the issue and believe that giving driver's licenses will be a net benefit to their constituents. Even if those constituents don't realize it themselves.
The will of the people isn’t static, in 2012 Oregon voters rejected marijuana legalization, only to approve it in 2014. Is it your position that once there is a referendum it can’t be revisited by the legislature at a later date? The last driver’s license initiate was voted on six years ago.
Also, there’s nothing stopping another initiative campaign to repeal the law. If the people voted it repeal it, it would be repealed. That doesn’t sound like tyranny at all.
I do agree with that however if you truly represent the citizens why would you vote for something that is demonstrably contrary to their will? Granted they probably are counting on that by election time this particular vote may be forgotten or outweighed by other factors. Probably more disingenuous than tyrannical but still..
This question has been discussed for hundreds of years.
“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”—Edmund Burke
I think it may be argued that holding referendums is not necessarily democratic. Referendums are not historically part of the UK electoral system. There have only ever been three UK wide referendums, two on Europe and one on the electoral system. We have none of the safeguards, of super-majorities for instance, that some countries have.
It could be argued that having failed to get your own way in the established electoral system, inventing a new unstoppable electoral system is undemocratic.
It's not an argument against Democracy. It's an argument against how much of the decision making for a country needs to be a popularity contest.
If you left everything up to the public, there would be 0 taxes, free education, healthcare, housing and monthly paychecks of a $1000 for everyone. But that's a terrible idea, and it doesn't get implemented anywhere, because you literally choose people to represent the population and to make sensible decisions.
> But that's a terrible idea, and it doesn't get implemented anywhere, because you literally choose people to represent the population and to make sensible decisions.
Haha. My beloved country has free healthcare, education and government social grants for women mostly and a lot of free actual legit housing for the poor. Don't get me wrong, the whole thing is crashing in slowmo for a few decades now because we really don't have anyone driving the vehicle but Jesus. I'll never abondon ship though.
That is true. The only reason it works is because they have a commodity that they can sell that everyone wants (for now), that is just dug from the earth and sold on the market with little cost/effort. Such economies are rare (and work because the other economies aren't the same). Also, they have a small life span and can easily not work (Venezuela).
To me it's an argument that there isn't enough democracy. Brexit would never had happened if the British political class (including Labour and libdems) were not totally hostile to the interests of the British working class over a period of several decades. When a government isn't responsive to the people, bad stuff happens.
How I would suggest they do it. Costing wise VAT is already included so pricing provably wont change unless tax rates are same/similar. Then, set up a Britain operations which would mean as the article said, registered with local tax office.
The next part would be, to "sell" goods to that British subsidiary tax account which would then sell to local customers.
That or do how things work with aliepxress and assume you are aliexpress and your customers want to buy from you. You just add VAT as import duty at time of sale and that should do it.
Not every business is large enough to sustain the overhead of a subsidiary in the UK or in any other country. Probably there is an opportunity window for middleman services that collect orders and sell to UK customers, an Alibaba from the EU to the UK.
For Brooks, they clearly have a UK subsidiary already, because they own and operate a manufacturing facility. It's probably just a bit of time to digest the trade agreement and figure out what the best thing is going forward, shich I would guess is probably finding a way to ship UK destined saddles within the UK to avoid customs.
For some of the other bicycle companies mentioned, it seems they don't have UK operations, so they may not want to have formal relations with the UK government. They'll need time to figure it out too, but probably worst case is they'll end direct mail order sales to the UK, and you'd have to buy through a retailer. But, again after some time to understand the new rules.
> Probably there is an opportunity window for middleman services that collect orders and sell to UK customers
There absolutely is, and such services are already showing up. "Let's fund our middlemen instead" wasn't a great slogan for a bus, of course, but this was always inevitable.
I'll just drop in here to say that as a massive cycling enthusiast and former racer,
BUY A BROOKS SADDLE!
They are the best bike saddle I've ever ridden. I don't get sore or chafe even on 5+ hour rids Sure, they weigh 2 lbs instead of 10 ounces, but that just doesn't matter for 99.8% of cyclists. Since it is leather, the saddle breaks in to your particular nether regions just like a boot or baseball gloves.
My Brooks was the first to ever give me saddle sores, and that's after having used some pretty serious ass hatchets in the past. It's definitely a quality product and it's better now, but break-in is a bitch.
Were you wearing padded cycling shorts? Those are said to actually prevent the saddle from molding itself comfortably to your sit bones.
Me, I spend half of every year cycle-touring the world, wearing ordinary cotton underwear and Fjällräven expedition trousers on the bike. My Brooks broke in after 500 km without sores and only a modicum of discomfort, and after that it has been like I’m sitting on air as I ride.
I've never found padded cycle shorts very comfortable and find it quite annoying that finding good quality cycling shorts without padding is getting difficult. Without padding they can also be used for other forms of exercise/sports.
For a place that already has sky high income tax, I wonder why place such an additional burden on businesses with complicated and punitive taxes like these?
They had two years to get ready. Of course a UK company should not be shipping to Italy and back to the UK. The UK is now outside the European Union. There are trade barriers now. That's what Brexit was all about. Leaving the European Union.
The Trade and Cooperation Agreement was first published on the 24th of December. That’s 11 days, not two years, even if they worked through the Christmas break (and why would their EU counterparts care enough to help them with that? It’s a problem for the Brits, the Italians can sell to the rest of the Single Market.)
And don’t try to say they should’ve seen it coming, the UK government has consistently claimed everything would be amazing.
I mean, they had two years to get ready for something entirely nebulous. It could have been some sort of Norway+ deal, where they'd have had to do nothing, or it could have been no deal, in which case they'd probably have had to close the British factory, or anything in between. In both of those extremes, and many of the in-betweens, any preparation for the current situation would of course have been futile.
>Of course a UK company should not be shipping to Italy and back to the UK.
They aren't a UK company, they're an Italian company. Per the article it was sold in 2002.
==
Owned since 2002 by Italian bicycle saddles firm Selle Royale, Brooks England’s suspension of orders from UK customers highlights one of the impacts of Brexit on trade between the UK and the EU.
===
>The UK is now outside the European Union. There are trade barriers now.
The agreement was signed on December 25th and is 1200 pages long. It's ridiculous to assume that a business could be ready in 6 days for a 1200 page agreement... this is just further incompetence on the part of the politicians running the show in the UK.
==
But the fact that the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which runs to 1,200 pages, was only signed on Christmas Eve has given businesses little time to assess the new rules and adapt their practices and systems to them.
==
> They aren't a UK company, they're an Italian company. Per the article it was sold in 2002.
That isn't clear. I suspect they still are a UK company, with 100% ownership from the parent Italian company. The distinction is relevant (if true) in exactly cases just like this. The alternative would be a sale of assets of the former child company and filing a dissolution of the same company. They likely didn't do that, but might have. This means that probably can restructure their business so that UK orders stay within the UK subsidiary.
This is technically true but remember that there was a long, protracted period where Brexit proponents were dissembling about what would happen. I’d expect this to happen for anyone who either believed them or thought that the obvious risks would cause people to stop playing politics and come up with a better plan. It’s not reasonable to expect every business, large or small, to have developed a range of contingency plans.
But it's not really a UK company shipping to Italy, it's an Italian company that owns UK factory shipping to Italy. With a single market, it probably made sense to Selle to have distribution flow from Italy. It's not their fault the UK is being an arse.
Right, they have a large distribution center in Italy, where they process all orders across Europe and beyond. Putting a distribution center into UK wasn't useful pre-Brexist as orders might contain items from different lines and a larger center is more efficient. Post-Brexit the market could be too small.
Well it has been up to everyone to prepare for the new rules. I get that details have not been known until recently. But it was clear from the start that moving goods around like this will not work.
There was lots of hopeful talk about UK contining to be in the single market. I think I heard that up through spring of 2020.
Even assuming it was clear that what they were doing wouldn't work, I don't think it was necessarily clear what would work. And it may not have been cost effective to change until necessary.
It would be difficult for London policy makers to come up with trade rules that are as damaging and onerous as the ones from Brussels. But I have every confidence that they are up to the task.