Here is the line that set my toes on fire:
"For the first time since the Second World War, Britain’s ability to feed itself is in question."
WTFF???!!!?????
First of all, exiting the EU doesn't force the UK to put tariffs on EU imports to the UK. They can just leave them at zero.
Second, I'm pretty sure that obesity, not food insecurity is the bigger problem in the contemporary UK.
There are plenty of countries with no FTA with the EU and they can all "feed themselves". If not, the EU FTA would not be the magic bullet to full bellies.
Here's some more rank stupidity:
"As a country that produces only around fifty-four per cent of what it eats, Britain starts to look vulnerable to fluctuating markets."
An FTA with the EU does NOT "protect" any country from "fluctuating markets". If the global coffee crop fails, prices will rise dramatically everything, trade agreements not withstanding. If a government does not let the price rise, then a shortage will arise instead.
And let's just finish off this dumpster fire with this gem:
Food is one of the unequivocal successes of the European Union.
Sweet Fancy Moses.
Actually I might partly agree with this one. Compared to the mess the EU has made of monetary policy, fiscal policy, dealing with its southern members' issues and dealing with the refugee crisis, the hideous CAP of the EU is not as bad as it otherwise might seem. After all, its cost has fallen from over 70% of the EU budget in 1984 to only 39% in 2013!
Zapatero, a tus zapatos!
3 comments:
It was astonishingly bad, wasn't it?
But there's worse to come. It's based on a paper by Professor (yes, Professor) Tim Lang. Who is actually a government adviser on such matters.....
There is only one cure for uninformed commentary at this level, to remember the incredibly poor predictions made in the past and to laugh and point at institutions that persistently raise up such fear mongering, ignorant voices in the future.
But what tools do you have to provide that service? There are internet millionaires to be minted who can create such a thing. It's just a database app. There's nothing really hard about it, but nobody is filling that need and increasing labor demand in the process.
Funny, that.
Ms. Bee needn't worry about her precious bananas. The treaty negotiating the €123/1000kg tariff on central american bananas remains in effect with the UK as a separate contracting party.
The UK will be free to negotiate a 0% tariff if the central american nations will take it. Does Venezuela grow bananas?
Hot banana (fresh) tariff action:
http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/dds2/taric/measures.jsp?Lang=en&SimDate=20160703&Taric=0803901000&LangDescr=en
Treaty provisions with brexit clause: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32012D0734
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