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Meringue exports
One big problem of Brexit is that it’s created a big category error in everyone’s thinking. Problems are categorised as being caused by Brexit instead of by trade regulation.
Nobody notices the EU could just choose not to restrict food imports from the UK. Or vice versa. French people’s inability to buy British meringues is unseen.
Because we use egg, there was a real problem with ‘do we need to get a vet in to certify the egg?’ and we were being pushed from pillar to post from [the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs] and the Department for Trade and it was so difficult to understand.
Is there really any need to check food at the border? Might one not reasonably assume that British food legally sold in Britain is safe? Stopping diseases at borders might be somewhat useful but this is something that can be activated after the detection of a specific problem, just as it presumably is within the EU.
The real reason for these regulations is to make work for regulators.
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I suppose that we will have to ask Niall if it is possible that the following anecdote is true or the work of Ben Trovato.
A lady from Edinburgh’s Morningside went to her local delicatessen and asked “Is that a roulade or a meringue?”.
The assistant replied. “Ma’am, you’re quite right, it’s a roulade.“.
But yes, how on Earth can a vet certify an egg without making omelettes? (as it were).
The real reason is protectionism. The Turbulent Times blog by Richard North covers the stupidity of eu food regulation. Vets are required to certify meat used in foodstuffs including pizza.
A possible correction “The real reason for almost all regulations is to make work for regulators.”
“The real reason for regulations is to make work for regulators.”
And to punish the UK for leaving the EU.
i.e., for demonstrating that the EU apparatus is unneccessary.
Note that I’m not saying that all regulation is unneccessary (although most of it is), but simply that there’s absolutely no need for a massive continental bureacractic imperium to do it. Whatever Brexit did, it clearly demonstrated that: can most of us honestly say that, in our day-to-day lives, we’ve noticed any difference whatsoever? I can’t. I sometimes wonder if I dreamed it all.
Mr Ed: I first heard that gag reported as the caption to a cartoon by the great Bud Neill of the Glasgow Evening Times (don’t know if it actually was or not), only it was a wee Glasgow wumman in the City Bakeries, and the roulade was a doughnut. Because, of course, nobody in Glasgow ever heard of a roulade before the 1980s. (Seriously. I remember a fancy patisserie opening in the West End in the early ’80s called “Roulade”, and nobody knew what it meant.)
If the EU insists on any specific requirement to allow trade then we must comply with that. That is an additional cost for the supplier because of Brexit and if that means that they can’t make any profit then they stop doing that item for sale in the EU. They will need to find new customers, not being in the EU opened up many other markets and that was a given when we made the call to leave the EU. Those that don’t deal with the EU can cut costs and decrease prices making EU goods more expensive.
We can always make our own rules up to cut out the EU providers in a tit for tat response if we want to get petty. Is there anything from the EU that we need and can’t get elsewhere?
“cut out the EU providers in a tit for tat response”
Let’s not harm ourselves. I’d prefer to demonstrate the superiority of unilateral free trade.
The great mistake was to call independence “Brexit”.
Most people can grasp what the concept of the independence of the United Kingdom means – and it (for example) does not mean that the United Kingdom is a subject of international bodies (such as the various international “rights” treaties – which do NOT protect basic liberties, Covid showed that, but which do undermine national independence), but what does “Brexit” mean? It is a made-up word that does not really mean anything.
“I achieved Brexit” is the same as saying “I achieved Bgizto”.
It is clearly nothing to do with the independence of the United Kingdom. We are still under the laws of the European Union and other international Corporate State bodies.
We voted in 2016 to leave the European Union – there was no mention of “Brexit” on the ballot paper. It is time for E.U. boats to leave British fishing grounds, and it is time for E.U. laws to have no more legal force in the United Kingdom – not “be incorporated into British law”, cease-to-have-legal-force.
No more “Brexit”, it is time for INDEPENDENCE.
“But we can not defy international bodies – we are NOT ALLOWED to control our own borders, and so on”.
Ah so that is what “Brexit” means – pretending to be independent whilst actually still being under the control of international policy. Sorry – but that is no acceptable.
Independence NOW.
Grange is the area in Edinburgh where old money lives. Morningside is next to Grange, and is famous for having an accent (and other social features) taken as indicating that the residents are pretentious (pretending to be Grange, for example – think Margot Leadbetter but Scottish). In that accent, “a meringue?” could indeed be mistaken for “Am I wrong?”.
As Sam Duncan indicates, the gag is old – and jokes about the Mornginside accent are older still. This poem may be pre-WWI FAIK.