Brexit stops Brooks England sales of ‘Made in Britain’ saddles to UK shoppers
road.cc
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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.
https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/business/vat/modernisi...
https://www.ato.gov.au/business/international-tax-for-busine...
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.
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.
https://davidallengreen.com/2021/01/the-real-origin-of-the-e...
> Owned since 2002 by Italian bicycle saddles firm Selle Royale
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.
We're talking about why Brooks' logistics might be handled in Italy. Which they are.
Why do you think it might be cheaper to have their full inventory sent to a company in Italy and then have logistics handled there?
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.
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.
Postage & Logistics are already robust industries in the UK.
Last time I bought some SSDs (pre-Brexit) on Amazon.co.uk, they were shipped from France.
How is Amazon handling it now? Extra tax on Amazon.co.uk and no tax on Amazon.de/fr/etc?
Thanks!
https://tamebay.com/2020/07/amazon-fba-brexit-bombshell-efn-...
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.
Edit: I mean if someone was arguing against Democracy, this would be one of their best arguments to support their position.
I am not arguing against Democracy. I hope I don’t get misunderstood.
Otherwise, agreed :-)
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).
[0] https://www.axios.com/electoral-college-by-vote-per-capita-4...
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.
Too often minorities are suppressed.
Plus, voters are terrible at understanding the long-term implications of what they think they want.
Tyranny would be if you couldn’t vote them out of office.
“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 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.
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.
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.
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.
The main complaint about the whole process was that it was far too ideological instead of being benignly technocratic.
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.
I'm not entirely sure what you're referring too?
I have no insight into how significant that concern would have been in practice, only that it reached the news.
And that's how you get Brexit.
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
"In March 2017 the Scottish Parliament authorised the Scottish Government to seek to hold a proposed second Scottish independence referendum."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_second_Scottish_indep...
"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."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement#Status_o...
If you are going to have a referendum it should require a supermajority because the turnout is never going to be good enough for a real consensus.
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.
Achieving a reasonably objective assessment of what the required majority should be would be very hard, though.
Anytime a simple majority can have such a large impact, it's probably a bad idea.
It might not be tyranny of the majority in the classic sense, but it's "tyranny of the half plus one."
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.
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.
</RANT>
I still wouldn't want to live there.
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.
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.
The complainers are trying to get all the upside with none of the down.
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.
Again, when the trading interests of a country are pitted against its other national interests, conflict is most often what comes next.
Leaving the USA, the Civil War cost many lives and resulted in still being in the USA. That didn’t stop Puerto Rico wanting to join the USA.
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.
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.
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.
However, those middle men will be paid by ... the average UK consumer.
I don't see how that's a plus for the UK economy. Or maybe it inflates GDP while decreasing purchasing power...
Here's a HN thread about this
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.
But to tell the truth, the only seat that breaks in is the one that's attached to you.
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.
Still, it feels Europe has, in general, huge tariffs, VAT and sales tax for any items, often doubling the price for seemingly no good reasons.
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.
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. ==
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.
And don’t try to say they should’ve seen it coming, the UK government has consistently claimed everything would be amazing.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/agreements-reache...
For the deal agreed on the 24th of December?
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.