JUST this week, we’ve discovered that now we are out of the EU-wide Interchange Fee Regulation, which used to cap credit card fees at 0.3%, Mastercard is now raising its fees to 1.5% for UK customers on any items bought in the EU. To add irony to injury, it might have been way more than 1.5% if the EU hadn’t also negotiated a cap for non-EU credit cards.
What a sea of opportunity!
Talking of the sea, let’s not forget the fishing industry and all the workers who voted for Brexit because they were promised a better future, free trade and a Europe gagging for our “happier British fish”, as Jacob Rees-Mogg joked from the despatch box. It is easy to be flippant when your personal financial assets are secure – less easy when your real job is being lost.
As photographs of Europe’s biggest fish market at Peterhead, devoid of produce, circulated on social media last week, trade ground to a standstill and business after business went bust, prices collapsed, while prime food rotted in lorries stuck at Dover. Exporting became tied up in the knots of the complicated and confusing post-Brexit rules and livelihoods were sacrificed.
The Brexiteers promised freedom and are creating a desert. And it’s only just getting started.
Still, companies can always move their jobs into the EU, as the Department for International Trade apparently advised without their tongues in their cheeks, in order to avoid extra paperwork, taxes and charges. Good to know.
READ MORE: Urgent calls for cross-Border Brexit taskforce as fish firms lose £3 million
Oh, and what about rejecting the EU’s music visa proposals so that UK musicians can’t play in other countries in Europe anymore. That’s the music industry and its multi-billion-pound contribution to the economy thrown under the tour bus. Now the UK Government is apparently considering some post-Brexit support to combat this loss. What with that and the enormous compensation needed for the fishing industry, they’ll have to plant a whole load more of those magic money trees at this rate.
Meanwhile in the City of London, they are haemorrhaging jobs out to Europe, with up to 7000 jobs already lost as a result of Brexit, and about £6 billion worth of shares previously traded in the City, now traded in the EU instead. A “stunning own goal” according to Gianluca Minieri, deputy global head of trading at fund manager Amundi.
What sunlit uplands!
And then there are the workers’ rights under threat? Life-saving medicines unavailable? Environmental protections tossed to one side despite climate change?
According to the clowns who run the Westminster circus, it’s all Europe’s fault, or Angela Merkel’s or Covid’s or the actual businesses themselves or really just anyone at all other than the people who created the mess. Johnson and co shrug off responsibility like an uncomfortable coat or an unfortunate event beyond their control. All must be sacrificed on the altar of sovereignty. And don’t expect the state to help out properly or get their hands dirty. It’s up to the little people to pick up the pieces of shattered dreams.
Sic a parcel of rogues.
But they are planning on getting their hands dirty to save the precious Union. They’ve even enlisted Gordon Brown to work with Gove at al on a new royal commission to persuade the Scots, through foul means or fair, to stick with our unequal offering and emasculation of our devolved parliament post-Brexit. That should work, Gordon is known for keeping his “vows” to Scotland as the SNP media chief, Murray Foote, well knows.
Just when you think it can’t get any worse, we discover that Boris Johnson, exempt from the Covid restrictions on non-essential travel that everyone else must endure for the greater good, is coming up to Scotland to make an impassioned plea for the Scots to stay in the UK. He must be hoping that the police who issued the fishermen outside Westminster last week with Covid penalties for travelling to London don’t get wind of his whistle-stop tour.
READ MORE: Brexit 'debacle' as Tories tell firms hit by trade problems to set up in the EU
A good while back the great runner Seb Coe, at that time a fishing MP, was chased by his irate constituents from a meeting in the Queen Elizabeth Centre across the road and into the Commons. It was said that he ran faster that day than he did in the Los Angeles Olympics. Johnson will need more than a Boris bike to keep ahead of angry fishermen.
The Prime Minister has a very short memory. Last time he came up to Scotland he was smuggled out of the back door of Bute House and sent packing with his tail between his legs.
We wish Boris the best of British. Perhaps Janey Godley can meet him at the Border when he comes with a sign large enough to be seen at a Covid-compliant distance.
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