French ferry firm opens new post-Brexit routes bypassing UK | Hacker News Reader

French ferry firm opens new post-Brexit routes bypassing UK

theneweuropean.co.uk

There's a term called the UK "landbridge" [0] where about 150,000 lorries a year on its way from mainland EU to Ireland would go through the UK to the shortest ferry distance to Dublin.

It looks like with Brexit, the paperwork and associated costs have reached a point where firms are seeing value in just ferrying around the UK.

[0] https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/trade-u...

The removal of 150,000 lorries per year from Cross Channel freight in Kent, and off of UK roads in general is a good thing in itself.

It reduces carbon emissions - 600 miles from Dover to Fishguard or Holyhead, there and back. That's a lot of diesel. It reduces wear and tear on the road infrastructure. It increases capacity at Dover/Folkestone. It even improves driver safety - less fatigue, and less time driving.

That's an interesting observation. Why weren't they doing it before?

Probably timely delivery of certain goods. It’s an hour across the Channel at Dover by ferry. But probably 10-12 hours if not more to Ireland from further along the channel. If you’re driving from Northern Europe that’s a lot more driving past Calais which adds more time.

There's been quite a few ferry routes starting between Ireland and France. The paperwork/delays on the landbridge mean it's more economical to do it this way.

There appears to be quite a significant disruption to trade at the moment to/from the UK with a lot of trucks which brought goods from Europe, returning empty.

I had a discussion a few days back, wondering if and independent Scotland (with EU membership) could get an economic boost by being a land-bridge between a united Ireland and North Europe.

Take Leith (Edinburgh) to Hamburg. This route would take 16 hours at 30 knots. Leith to Rotterdam would be a bit quicker only take 13 hours. That compares to a Cork to St Malo which takes 11 hours.

Driving Hamburg to Warsaw takes 8 hours which saves 12 hours compared to driving St Malo to Warsaw (20 hours on google maps).

Belfast to Leith is maybe around 6-8 hours (incl loading and unloading at the ports), that leaves 4 hours which is about the distance driving from Cork to Belfast.

So from north (united) Ireland to north Europe it will be faster to go via Scotland. But even when shipping from Cork, the rest patterns for the drivers might be better going via Scotland, even if it takes about the same time on paper (8hours driving max at a piece instead of 20hours)

I wonder if that might actually be some kind of justification for the infamous idea of a Ireland-Scotland bridge?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-496610...

You can't do 30 knots on the Elbe river. I mean you could, but only once, because VERBOTEN! (Because of the waves, and such.) Cuxhaven would be more apt, but lacks Autobahn(to Hamburg). Same for Brunsbüttel. Furthermore Hamburgs Autobahn is almost always gridlocked, at least in parts(Especially around the Elbtunnel). Your map is not the territory, laddie :-)

Business sees Brexit as damage and routes around it.

Apologies to John Gilmore!

So when's the FR-IE tunnel going to be built? Roscoff-Cork is only ~500 km. :)

this is fantastic news for Ireland. They'll be absorbing a lot of the business that has traditionally gone to the UK (or stayed in the UK):

> "And Irish traders too are seeking direct links to Western France."

> Port of Cork chief executive Conor Mowlds said it was a "hugely positive" development for Cork.

> "Importers and exporters now have further transport options to get their freight direct to the EU and bypass the UK Land-Bridge," he said, adding the new travel corridor will "strengthen the region by offering more flexibility to Irish customers, ensuring supply chains are maintained".

NI remains a problem for EU as it's currently like a Trojan horse within the EU[1] and will/is used to bypass the tariffs and import/export taxes. Europe should do everything to support a United island of Ireland by staying tough on the sea-border between IE/UK.

(off-topic: as the old joke goes wrt the DUP "What's the difference between an apple and an orange? There is no such thing as an apple bastard!").

[1] Northern Ireland suspends Brexit checks amid safety fears for port staff: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/01/northern-ire...

I'm sure it's great for the port, but it's worse for other businesses.

Before brexit, it was cheaper and faster to drive across Britain.

Indeed. It's interesting that the conservatives in the UK have chosen sovereignty over free trade. These aren't Thatcher tories.

In the immortal words of our current Prime Minister when he was Foreign Secretary: "F*ck Business"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44618154

> sovereignty over free trade

I yet to get an actual concrete example of the sovereignty lost/gained.

Its always a high concept freedom this sovereignty that. But give me example of how EU was damaging UK interest to the point where they were loosing their sovereignty.

An please, on weasel/'technically correct' arguments. An example that affected lives and interests of British citizens. Also, UK was part of union, this doesn't me its all about 'me' its about consensus and fairness. No argument France had slightly better deal for their farmers etc.

I've always maintained that the fact that UK could hold a referendum and leave whenever it wanted was proof that it never lost an ounce of sovereignty. Compare that to the situation with Scotland, where they need Westminster's permission to even have the vote.

> It's interesting that the conservatives in the UK have chosen sovereignty over free trade.

It's interesting that Eurocrats chose pushing further political union over being content with free trade.

Northern Ireland suspends Brexit checks amid safety fears for port staff

There's unstated background in that article, I'm not complaining about that, I'm sure it's common knowledge to people in the UK.

But I'm not really clear on who is mad at or threatening whom. Let's take the very beginning of the article:

Brexit checks on animal and food products arriving into Belfast and Larne ports have been suspended amid fears over the safety of staff

Are we talking about goods from Northern Ireland (not part of EU?) arriving at a port prior to being shipped to EU? Or are they arriving from EU into a port in Northern Ireland?

Who is doing the threatening? Why?

Nobody's really threatening anyone yet but the UK and Ireland doing what they can to allow the open border status quo to continue between NI and Ireland because to do otherwise would be to conspicuously wipe their ass with the good Friday agreement and few on either side really wants that.

They're not worried about a shootout. They're worried some irate person gets in fisticuffs with a customs worker in a manner that creates a viral video that creates political problems.

They say they are worried out customs workers being targeted by ultra loyalist groups. There are claims of shadowing activity and threats made to workers.

It's all written there... the article mentions "loyalist communities", had to look it up, but DDG summarizes Wikipedia:

> Ulster loyalism is the political movement for maintaining Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom.

But for some more background info: Northern Ireland is now within the customs zone of EU, and the "EU border" is between the Irish and British islands; otherwise the border would have to be between Ireland (EU) and Northern Ireland (not EU); this has been a cause of conflict in the past, and the UK also signed an agreement in the past that there would be no such border.

So adding a border between NI and Great Britain is pissing off the people who see it as creating a big separation between the 2 parts of the country known as the UK.

So adding a border between NI and Great Britain is pissing off the people who see it as creating a big separation between the 2 parts of the country known as the UK.

Okay, that helped. The goods in question were shipped from the island of Great Britain to ports in Northern Ireland.

But what also confused me was from the article itself, which said "Mid and East Antrim borough council agreed on Monday night to remove 12 of its staff". The word borough implies to me some sort of local government, like a city.

So why is a borough council responsible for border checks?

In the USA if something arrives into, e.g. the Port of New York and New Jersey, it is the US Federal government that is responsible for checks, not some local government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_New_Jersey#Jurisdictio... The port is a port of entry. The United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) regulate international imports and passenger arrivals.

A borough council is an urban or suburban local government district. They usually have responsibility for enforcing the standards of goods sold in local shops (not toxic, scale calibrated correctly etc) so I'm not surprised if they have something to do with the process.

Also, the good are moving internally. Do federal staff inspect American ships coming into Hawaii or American Samoa?

Do federal staff inspect American ships coming into Hawaii or American Samoa?

Interesting question. I don't know. In general, US states and territories only have very limited jurisdiction over interstate commerce, which is primarily a Federal responsibility.

For example the state of California inspects vehicle traffic crossing their border for the presence of pests.

But California's power over interstate commerce is quite limited. The US Supreme Court ruled that they could only regulate interstate commerce in order to serve "a legitimate local purpose that could not adequately be served by available nondiscriminatory alternatives" that would otherwise comply with the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Border_Protection_S...

I mean, yeah. Why wouldn't they?

HN has truly been scraping the bottom of the barrel for news sources this week. Please, continue posting news articles unrelated to HN from single-issue, hyper-partisan news publications.

I run a company that does a fair amount of trade in the UK from EU, this stuff is hugely interesting to me. If you have any problems with arguments in this article then please list them.

Why on earth is this posted here?

Because they "hacked" their way around regulations?

evidently some people on HN were interested in it.

Yet it's another small yet important effect of Brexit, as it's discussed here in great detail, no?

Lots of political news is posted. It generally doesn't last very long before being flagged.

It might have gone past unnoticed, but the ferry industry (at least in Europe) in general has been shrinking significant the last 20 years. At the same time air travel and car usage has gone up. Train usage seems to sit somewhere between.

A revival of the ferry industry, even if it just because of brexit, is interesting. The industry is also in dire need of modernization and electrification, and if done, could be much more ecological than bridges and increased road capacity. Energy efficiency in transport is generally in favor of more transportation over water.

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